


in poison places, we are anti-venom

by rowansberry (amarowan)



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kidnapping, Kinda, M/M, Mirror Universe, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Tags Contain Spoilers, Underage Drinking, and the bad kids had to rescue riz, and the spring break trip for grades never existed, like i said Many liberties, many liberties were taken with canon, once i've updated tags with each new chapter they will be spoilers for themselves, thats it thats the whole premise, what if baron was the bbeg
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23902666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amarowan/pseuds/rowansberry
Summary: When Riz came to, he was tied against a chair, thick woven ropes taut against his torso as he struggled, digging into his wrists and ankles. The horrible, puppet face of “Baron from the Baronies” was staring back at him, soulless black eyes digging deep into him. “Where the fuck are we,” he asked, trying to no avail to free his arms from their bonds. If he could just get free— If he could just get a hand out—“Oh, Riz Gukgak,” they said, and their voice was just as chilling as it had been when Riz had shattered the mirror, soft and high and accented, every word enunciated just wrong enough to set Riz on edge even more, “you don’t remember our home?”-in which riz goes missing at the beginning of the bad kids' sophomore year spring break and fabian leads the charge to find him, in a mirror dimension wrought with illusions and built on lies. diverges from canon from the very beginning of sophomore year onwards.
Relationships: Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 126
Kudos: 225





	1. the foxes hunt the hounds

**Author's Note:**

> a few small things to note that differ from canon!  
> \- fig didn't get possessed via dreams and go missing like riz did so she is with the bad kids!  
> \- instead of a spring break adventuring final, it's just a normal spring break! the bad kids wanted to go on a road trip and cathilda, sandra lynn, and gilear were to be the chaperones
> 
> kudos and comments are much appreciated!!
> 
> work and chapter title from 'young volcanoes' by fall out boy
> 
> minor cw for mentioned non-consensual drug usage

When Riz came to, he was tied against a chair, thick woven ropes taut against his torso as he struggled, digging into his wrists and ankles. The horrible, puppet face of “Baron from the Baronies” was staring back at him, soulless black eyes digging deep into him. “Where the fuck are we,” he asked, trying to no avail to free his arms from their bonds. If he could just get free— If he could just get a hand out— 

Baron trailed one bone-white fingertip along his arm, and Riz noticed his shirt and vest were missing, leaving him in just his white undershirt and his torn dress pants, more exposed than he’s ever been before in front of anyone other than his mom. (So sue him, it wasn’t like he was going to strip for Adaine or Fabian, and he didn’t really do _casual_ . Yes, a tank top was showing way more skin than he was ever comfortable with, and it didn’t help that for some godsforsaken reason _Baron_ — whatever the fuck they were — had decided to tear his pants to the knee, giving him some oddly styled shorts to go with the undershirt.) “Oh, Riz Gukgak,” they said, and their voice was just as chilling as it had been when Riz had shattered the mirror, soft and high and accented, every word enunciated just wrong enough to set Riz on edge even more, “you don’t remember our home?”

Riz looked around, and yeah, it did kinda look like a suburban middle class home — oddly similar to Kristen’s, if he was being honest, with windows letting in the sunlight and throw pillows on the couch directly opposite him. If he wasn’t currently tied to a chair, half-clothed, in the middle of this otherwise empty room (bar the couch), Riz would probably find this a pretty pleasant place. Something in Baron’s words caught him off guard, though— “ _Our_ home?”

He hadn’t thought it possible, but the ivory mask on Baron’s face somehow stretched into a grin, mouth still not moving an inch as they spoke again. “Don’t you remember? The home we would have together, Riz Gukgak?”

“I— I never told you anything—” Riz shot back, mouth going dry. How long had it been since he was taken from his apartment? Where were the others? Where was _he_? Was this the mirror dimension? Thoughts swirled in his head like water down the drain of a half-filled bathtub, unsure of what he was missing and how badly that would come back to bite him later. 

Baron rested ice-cold, ivory fingers against Riz’s bare shoulders, sending shivers down his spine. Riz could feel their breath against his ear, only marginally warmer than their hands. “You told me all about our first date,” they whispered, eyes still unblinking and grin unbreaking. “How we went to Basrar’s for ice cream, and watched the sun set as it melted. About prom, and graduation, and after that. You built me a whole life with you, Riz Gukgak.”

Quicker than Riz could see, Baron fell onto the couch in front of him, tilting their head to the side as their eyes, matte black, studied him. “Don’t you remember? All these _lies_ you fed me?” And shit, Riz was beginning to remember. How Baron had fed him tequila and dragon spice, the same stuff he’d seen Aelwyn snorting all those weeks back at Ostentatia’s party, until he’d been loose and high off his ass, spouting all sorts of nonsense. He couldn’t recall everything — he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to — but there was enough there now to leave Riz with a sinking feeling deep in his gut. Somehow, this horrible, twisted creature created from what Riz thought was a simple, innocuous lie all those days ago, had gained enough sentience to figure out how to get Riz to give it even more strength. 

“Fuck,” he breathed out, realizing just what exactly it was he had gotten himself into. And really, Riz had no one to blame but himself. “Baron, how long have I been here?”

“Long enough...” they said, that unnerving grin never leaving their face, lips unmoving and eyes staring blankly at Riz. “Why? Are you worried your friends don’t care about you enough to come save you, Riz Gukgak?”

Riz’s heart dropped into his stomach. “You know what, fuck you Baron—”

Baron gasped, mouth still not moving from its unyielding grin. “Oh, so mean! And to your romance partner. So cruel… ”

“You’re the one that tied me to a fucking _chair_ ,” Riz hissed back, struggling against his restraints but only managing to tear open some scabbed over wounds on his wrists. Shit, he has to get out, he’s already been here too long. “And you’re calling me cruel? Some nerve. Treat your boyfriend a little better, why don’t you.”

They let out a noise that Riz could only describe as cooing, high-pitched and sickly sweet to his ears. “Oh, I am so glad you called yourself my boyfriend, Riz Gukgak! You have not done that yet… I am so pleased…” Their body moved unnervingly smoothly as they stood up from the couch, the way they approached making Riz feel very much like a piece of prey just waiting to be pounced on and eaten alive. “ _Let me show you how pleased I am, Riz Gukgak,_ ” they practically purred, kneeling in front of him and placing their hands on Riz’s thighs, the cold seeping through the fabric of his pants like ice. 

“Get the fuck away from me,” Riz growled, trying to quell the rising panic in his voice. “And stop using my full name, it’s fucking weird.”

Baron’s hand kept travelling up Riz’s thigh, and Riz desperately wished that his legs were free so he could kick this creepy motherfucker in the face. “Would you rather I call you Riz?” they asked, thumb making circles along the inside of his leg. In any other context, and with nearly anyone else, Riz would find this nice, pleasurable, even, but he wanted nothing more than to get away. “What about... _The Ball_?”

At the sound of the familiar nickname, uttered so differently than in Fabian’s rich and boisterous tones, Riz started pulling again at the rope binding him to this fucking chair, stopping only once Baron grabbed his neck with those ice-cold fingers, standing to their full height and tipping Riz’s chin up until he was forced to look into those soulless eyes. Chest heaving with haggard breaths, it took all of Riz’s self-control to not spit in Baron’s face. “You don’t get to call me that,” he said, voice rough and gravelly and so different from what either of them were used to hearing. “There’s only one person in this entire fucking world who can call me that, and you’re not him, so keep it out of your _fucking_ mouth!” 

Baron laughed, high and reedy and spine-chilling in how unearthly it was. “Oh, Riz Gukgak, there is so much for you to learn,” they purred, dropping Riz’s chin from their grasp. Something pricked his neck, not unlike a needle, and the world behind Baron began to blur and spin.

The last thing Riz felt before he blacked out was Baron’s hands on his thighs again, continuing their slow and painful trek upwards. 

+

They were _supposed_ to leave for their spring break trip at 10 AM on the dot, but Gilear had been slow with the coffee orders and Riz was late, so at 10 AM everyone was still sitting around at Mordred Manor. Fabian found it a bit odd that Riz was late, considering how punctual that boy managed to be for everything else, but perhaps he had just overslept, as he was wont to do when he stayed up too late working on a clue board or pacing until he worked a new groove into the floor of his office. 

“I’m gonna call The Ball real quick,” Fabian said, and no one really gave any signs to acknowledge that they had heard him, but that was okay because Gilear had just arrived with their coffee, a surprising mess considering the coffee shop was just down the road, and Fabian understood more than anyone the importance of a good drink in the morning. (He did make a mental note to check everyone’s orders afterwards, though, and decide whether he would enact bodily harm to Gilear’s stupid face today or tomorrow.) He pulled out his crystal, going into the _Recents_ tab on the phone app, and clicked on The Ball’s number. (Of course his number was the most recent one, there were few people that were willing to listen to Fabian until ungodly hours of the evening.)

The phone rang once, twice — nothing. Voicemail. 

Dread started to snake through Fabian’s veins as he brought his crystal down from his ear, staring at the now-red text illuminating The Ball’s contact with horror. “Something is _horribly_ wrong,” he said, successfully pulling everyone’s attention away from their beautifully convoluted coffee orders. “I called The Ball and it went straight to voicemail, that has _never_ happened.”

“Maybe he just wasn’t at his crystal?” Adaine suggested, sipping what was probably a peppermint mocha while holding what was definitely a plain black coffee in the other hand. Damn it, Gilear _had_ gotten those two correct. “I wouldn’t make that judgement after just one missed call, Fabian.”

Fabian shook his head, the fear and anxiety starting to fill his heart and pump through his bloodstream into every inch of his body. “Every time I have called The Ball, he has picked up honestly quicker than I thought possible. Something is _very_ wrong.” It didn’t matter whether Fabian was calling after Bloodrush practice or in the middle of the night or even just during the boring history classes he couldn’t be bothered to attend — Riz somehow always managed to pick up right after the first ring. “We need to go see if he’s okay.”

“Hold on, shouldn’t we try calling Sklonda first or something?” Kristen asked, seemingly oblivious to Tracker braiding her hair into a surprisingly intricate crown. Fabian would have brought it up, but that would inevitably follow with a lecture on the idea of “gay yearning and tenderness” and how it differs from what straight people are capable of and _no Kristen, you don’t need to tell us again, we’ve heard three different versions of this inspirational speech in the past two days._ “Maybe Riz just slept in.”

“The Ball does not _sleep in_ ,” Fabian said, honestly a little offended on The Ball’s behalf because really, that was just too strong a blow against his constant vigilance and self-discipline. “And I don’t have Sklonda’s number.”

“Sandralynn does,” Fig called out from where she was sipping at a black coffee. (From the look on her face, this was her first time trying a black coffee and the regret was _palpable._ ) “I caught them gossiping the other night, it was gross.”

“It was _not_ gross, Fig,” Sandralynn said as she walked in, grabbing one of the many coffees Gilear was still holding and taking a large swig. “What’s this about Sklonda?”

“The Ball might be dead,” Fabian told her, ignoring the protests from his friends because he was right, he knew it! There was no other reason he would let his phone go unanswered. “And none of us have Sklonda’s number, so if you don’t call her right now I _will_ hop out the window, onto the Hangman, and break several safety laws while speeding to The Ball’s office.”

“Okay, please don’t jump out the window, Fabian,” Sandralynn said, downing the rest of her coffee before pulling out her crystal. Everyone went silent, even Gilear, waiting with bated breath as the phone rang. “Hey, Sklonda! Mhm… yeah, I was just thinking about that the other day… oh, really? Hmm…”

“Ask her about The Ball!” Fabian hissed. Thank god Hallariel didn’t have a crystal. There were only few things worse than mom gossip, and The Ball dying was definitely one of those. Now was _not_ the time, Sandralynn. 

Sandralynn hushed him before turning her attention back to her crystal. “Have you seen Riz yet today? … Oh, so he was at his office… Yeah, Fabian called him and he didn’t pick up… Alright, thanks Sklonda! I’ll let the kids know. Bye!” 

She hung up the crystal, and Fabian had to hold himself back from pouncing on her and forcing her to tell them every detail. “Well? Where is he?”

“Sklonda said he went to his office after dinner last night and she hasn’t seen him since, but that’s not out of the ordinary for him,” Sandralynn said. Fabian cursed beneath his breath — “Language”, Gilear warned, but no one listened to him anyways — and ran to the nearest window, calling the Hangman as he swung a leg over the windowsill. 

“Fabian, we have a front door—” he heard Sandralynn yell, but the Hangman was already waiting below the window and Fabian’s veins were filling with icy anxiety again. He jumped, landing smoothly in the Hangman’s saddle before speeding towards Strongtower Apartments. The wind felt nice in his hair, and Fabian most definitely broke a couple laws on the way there, but Sklonda would bail him out if for some reason a rookie cop thought it prudent to pull him over and give him a ticket. Halfway there, his crystal pinged with a text, and he let the Hangman take over the driving — not that it wasn’t already doing 90% of the work — to check it. 

**horse gay  
** Fabian I cant believe you left us all with Sandralynn  
She gave us a lecture on why were all killing her before she let us follow you

 **rage! in the inferno  
**it was great

 **The Elven OraCOOL B)  
** it was awful, i hate seeing any of them disappointed in us  
although, i guess she was disappointed in fabian  
never mind it was great

 **babie  
** My parents let me buy their van off of them yesterday!  
We’re on the way right now  
Tracker came too

 **horse gay  
** It definitely wasnt because she wanted to makeout with me in the back of Gorgugs van or anything  
Definitely not

 **babie  
**Please don’t wreck my van, I just bought it

 **Fancy Boy™  
** im almost at The Balls office call me when you get there  
i’ll leave the door unlocked for u guys  
break a couple laws Gorgug time is of the motherfucking essence

 **babie  
**No, thank you

 **rage! in the inferno  
**don’t worry i’ll convince him by the time we hit the highway

+

Riz’s office was eerily quiet as Fabian tried the door, tamping down his worry when the doorknob turned easily and opened to reveal the workspace, messier than Fabian remembered it. Papers were strewn about every surface, more than a few torn up or scribbled over in The Ball’s familiar scrawl. The floor had deep gouges in the hardwood surface, gouges that Fabian recognized as coming from Riz’s claws. (He still had to get Cathilda to fix the scratches in his wall from their last group sleepover, The Ball could _not_ hold his liquor well.) He followed them to a shadowed corner of the room, the only thing in it an upright mirror that seemed to have been shattered and then put back together. 

The sound of feet on concrete echoed through the stairwell and past the open door of The Ball’s office, the rest of the Bad Kids joining Fabian not even thirty seconds later. “Shit, what happened here?” Fig asked, running a hand on the worn and admittedly worse for the wear couch. 

Adaine’s eyes glowed brilliant blue as she cast a spell, voice taking on the same, nearly unearthly quality it always did when she used magic as she said, “No magic that I can detect aside from on the mirror, but even then, it seems more like an enchantment than a spell…” 

Kristen reached out with her staff to tap the glass, letting out a soft gasp as it rippled from the point of impact like water before stilling and becoming reflective once again. “That’s so cool,” she breathed out. 

Cautiously, Fabian approached the mirror, placing a hand against its cool surface and watching as the glass rippled away from his touch, not unlike still water in a pool. On an impulse, he pushed his hand in, watching in awe as it glided effortlessly into the mirror. “Careful,” Gorgug warned. 

With a sound like a crack of thunder, a bone-white mask appeared in front of Fabian, just barely taller than Riz, placing an icy hand against Fabian’s in the mirror. “Hello there,” the figure said, lips unmoving as its voice, thin and accented in a way Fabian couldn’t place. “And who are you?”

“We’re looking for The Ball,” Fabian told them sternly, trying to remove his hand from the reflective liquid to no avail. _Shit_. He could feel the presence of the others behind him, approaching and watching with a healthy amount of caution. It was alright, if Fabian could just keep his brave face up for long enough for Adaine to break the enchantment on the mirror or for Gorgug to shatter it with his axe then everything would be alright — “Or, well, I guess you wouldn’t know who that is. Riz? Gukgak? Have you seen him around?”

The creature let out a noise that Fabian could only interpret as laughter, as far as it was anything relatively normal. “Oh, yes, Riz Gukgak! I am having so much fun with him!”

“And who are you, exactly?” Fabian tugged one more time against the mirror, trying to get his hand free so he could pull his sword and slash this creep across the face, and the creature grabbed his hand in a vice grip, bones on the wrong side of breaking. 

“I am Baron, Riz Gukgak’s romance partner,” it said, voice still joyful and breathy and so, so _wrong_. “We are having a wonderful time together.” 

“Okay, you creepy motherfucker, I’m going to have to stop you there. Baron from the Baronies doesn’t really exist.” Adaine started muttering furiously, and in the reflection of the mirror Fabian could see Gorgug, axe raised and at the ready. Fabian gave ‘Baron’ his signature Seacaster grin, attempting to wink with his remaining eye. (Although, he really wasn’t too sure how effective this move was anymore; having only one eye did complicate things, and the others never gave him a straight answer when he asked if it looked lame or cool.) “Come on, we all know The Ball was just lying so he didn’t feel bad about not getting his kisses in.”

“Lies? _Lies?_ ” Baron’s face, previously rock-still and unchanging, shifted to a hideous snarl, smacking a hand against the mirror and causing Fabian to startle and take a step backwards. “Oh, I am borne of lies, Fabian Aramais Seacaster, and made stronger by their hands.” They grabbed Fabian’s hand, tugging him sharply towards the mirror. “Do not underestimate the power of _lies_.” 

“Gorgug, now!” Fabian yelled, and Gorgug took one ferocious swing towards the mirror, shattering it into hundreds of thousands of tiny, shimmering pieces. Glass shards cut the exposed skin on his face, his chest — luckily he brought his free arm up in time to protect his good eye — and clattered to the ground with an almost sweet, chiming sound. 

Baron hissed, retracting into the shadows, disappearing into the swirling image created in the frame of the mirror left behind. The glass shards fell away, revealing what looked to be a glassless mirror, made of the same rippling material Fabian had just freed himself from. 

“Baron from the Baronies, huh?” Fig said. When Fabian turned to look at her, she already had a lit roll of something hanging from her fingertips. (The Ball was going to tear her a new one when they brought him back, he never let her smoke in his office.) “‘Borne of lies?’ That’s some emo fucking shit, and coming from me you know that’s serious.”

“That was Riz’s so-called date, right?” Kristen asked, kicking a mirror shard away with the side of her foot. “Do you think he… created Baron? And maybe Baron took him into this mirror space?”

Adaine pursed her lips, studying the rippling, reflective surface intensely. “It’s definitely well within the realm of possibility.”

“We have to go in,” Fabian said, looking around. A tiny flicker of relief shuddered through him at the resolute nods of his friends. “If there’s even a chance that Riz is there — which, really, it makes the most sense, where else could he go where he wouldn’t be able to answer my calls — then we have to save him.”

“We’ll have to be as honest as we can going into this… mirror dimension,” Adaine said, draining her to-go cup of … coffee? Peppermint mocha? Fabian wasn’t sure, but he was impressed she had kept it during the mad dash to this office. “Can’t risk us creating our own Baron’s.”

“Text your parents,” Fabian told them, shooting his mom a quick text. “Tell them we’re going to save The Ball.” Everyone nodded, typing furiously over their crystals for a few seconds before stowing them in their pockets. 

Fabian turned to face the mirror, touching the glassless pool and shuddering when it rippled, the image on its surface no longer a reflection but a window to somewhere shadowed and boundless. He shut his eyes, drawing in a deep breath— and stepped through the glass, into the awaiting unknown.


	2. crooked smiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which the search begins, and riz contends with the horrors of his own mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: non-consensual drug use, non-graphic violence, implied/referenced abuse

The space behind the mirror was an almost perfect reflection of the room they had left behind, filled with Riz’s familiar scrawl on scattered papers, several half-drank mugs of coffee on every flat surface. Signs that The Ball had been there, had taken up space and had lived and had taken Fabian’s late night calls in the worn office chair by the desk buried beneath a mound of paper. But there was something  _ wrong _ about all of it — the air was clean, empty of any distinguishing scent, setting Fabian off in every wrong way. This was The Ball’s space, it should smell like him — but it didn’t, and somehow that was more unsettling than the entire interaction that had just taken place with Baron. 

“Gods, this is weird,” Adaine said as she stepped through the mirror. “Is this whole space just a mirror image of Elmville?”

The rest of the Bad Kids filed in behind her, a soft gasp leaving Fig’s mouth as she looked around, running a hand along the wall and scattering some papers on the floor. “This is both the creepiest and coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Fig said. “Look, even the writing on the papers is mirrored!”

Fabian touched a hand to a pile of papers placed haphazardly on the seat of a chair, tracing the familiar, scratchy script. “No, there’s got to be more than just this. Where would Baron hide Riz that we wouldn’t know about?”

“What d’you mean?” Fig asked. 

“Baron said they were borne of lies, right?” Adaine interjected. “So if Riz’s lie that day made Baron in their entirety…”

“ … Then they wouldn’t know anything more than Riz does now,” Tracker finished. Her brows, thick and bushy as ever, furrowed as she contemplated what this meant, Adaine pacing the creaky floor a few feet away from her. “But if lies can create things, couldn’t Baron just create a new place we wouldn’t know about?”

“Isn’t Baron already a lie?” Gorgug asked, walking towards the door that lead to the front room of Riz’s office. 

Fabian studied the mirror they had just passed through, poking it again and letting out a small sigh of relief when it rippled the same way its reflection had. At least if things went horribly wrong, they had an escape route.“Lies can’t lie, can they?” he asked. If this place was full of reflections and illusions, but Riz had to create a deception in the first place for Baron to even have any power, then wouldn’t it track that the deception itself could draw power from using its own being to make more of what it was in the first place — lies?

Adaine snapped her fingers, loud enough that Fig startled and dropped her still-lit roll of cloves onto a pile of Riz’s papers, which she promptly stomped out before it could start a proper fire. “So if lies can’t lie,” she started, eyes glimmering the same way Riz’s did when he solved a new case, “that means Baron would need Riz to lie  _ for _ them, if they wanted to make anything new here. That explains why they would take Riz away.” She squared her shoulders, marching through the doorway that Gorgug had already passed through. “Now all that’s left for us to do is find Riz.”

“And how exactly will we do that?” Fig asked. Adaine didn’t give her an answer, just stepped towards the front door of the apartment and threw it open.

The world beyond the apartment seemed to just be a reflection of what they had left behind, uncanny in the same way that seeing your face double-reflected is, familiar but wrong enough to be unsettling. Fabian followed Adaine out into the hallway, traipsing the familiar path down the stairs and out of the large, towering building. Silence filled his ears, shot through only by the gaits of the other Bad Kids behind him. 

“Is it just me, or is everything a little  _ too _ quiet?” Fig asked, letting out a smoke-filled breath too close to Fabian for his liking. (If only it wasn’t cloves. They were too cloying, too spiced, too full of flavour and not enough of the actual drug in his opinion — his father’s dragon spice was much more his speed.) “Normally when we walk up to Riz’s apartment I can hear the vinyls from the indie college guy that lives next to him.”

“He can’t be playing records all day though, right?” Gorgug asked.

“No, you don’t understand, this guy literally somehow always has an indie record going.”

“It’s not just the records guy, even the birds are quiet,” Tracker added, walking off into the small garden at the front of the apartment complex. Everyone quieted down, listening—

All Fabian could hear was silence. The absence of sound, could he really say he heard anything when there was nothing to hear? It was odd, something he’d almost taken for granted, the near constant bustle of Elmville and everyone in it. “Are we the only ones here?”

“I mean, Riz is here somewhere, right?” Kristen walked towards Tracker, stopping in her tracks as she noticed something in the parking lot. “Hey, Gorgug’s van and the Hangman are still here.”

“Oh, Hangman!” Fabian rushed over, sliding smoothly into the saddle of the Hangman. “Great, if we can move quickly it’ll take us way less time to find Riz in this weird uncanny valley Elmville. Hangman?”

The familiar growl of the Hangman didn’t respond. 

Fabian frowned, grabbing the handlebars and revving them, fear filling his veins and drying out his mouth when the engine didn’t roar in response. “Hangman?” he repeated, more urgent than before.

“... The Hangman counts as a living creature, right?” Adaine says, voice quiet. “It makes sense that he wouldn’t be here with us.”

Fabian clenched his hands around the handlebars, tight, before releasing them and swinging himself off. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes… that makes sense.”

“The van’s okay,” Gorgug called from the driver’s seat. It was almost enough to make Fabian laugh, how the whole van was just…  _ flipped _ , everything the opposite way of how he remembered it. Almost. “Is it worth it to drive around Elmville for a bit? It’s pretty big… and who knows where Riz is…”

Adaine slid into shotgun, Fig protesting once she realized but eventually submitting and sliding into the middle row of seats, Kristen and Tracker fully taking up the back row and leaving Fabian to share with Fig. “I mean, it’s not like we have anything else to go after,” Adaine said. 

Kristen let out a small laugh. “It’s almost like a road trip!”

“Yeah, except if we aren’t quick enough to find The Ball, he might be dead by the time this road trip is done,” Fabian snapped. An uneasy silence settled in the van, and Fabian might have only had one eye but he wasn’t blind to the anxious and borderline worried glances thrown in his direction. He was just stressed because of how the Hangman wasn’t here, that was all! What else would make him be more stressed about this situation than normal?

Fig put out her joint of cloves on an ashtray balancing precariously on top of the drinks holder, letting out one final breath of smoke near the window before turning to face Fabian. “Are you good? You’ve been… really tense since we got in here, I’m gonna be honest.”

He huffed out a breath, fidgeting with the hem of his letterman’s jacket. “I’m fine. I just want to find The Ball before anything bad happens to him.”

“Considering how much you deny that you’re his best friend, you really care about Riz, huh?” Fig said. Fabian turned to look at her, and that familiar gleam was back in her eye, the same one that got her detention on that first day of freshman year and returned whenever she called Kalvaxus ‘Goldenrod’ and tried to provoke him. 

“I can care about my  _ friends _ , Fig,” he replied, praying to whatever god it was Kristen was worshipping now to please just spare him this one time from Fig. “If it had been any of you that had gone missing instead of Riz I would have reacted exactly the same.” For a brief second, Fabian’s chest tightened up, just a quick, barely-there-before-it’s-gone twinge of pressure, so fast that he thought nothing of it. 

Fig said nothing, just turned away from Fabian and rolled down the window, lighting another joint. Quiet quickly fell upon them, unsteady as the rocking of a boat in a storm, broken as soon as Adaine pulled out her crystal and said, “I call dibs on aux cord!” 

Fabian watched fondly as Fig and Kristen practically fell over each other to wrest the cord out of Adaine’s hand and plug their own crystals in, unable to ignore the twinge in his chest again at the thought of Riz, somewhere in this manic dreamscape, somewhere beyond Fabian’s reach and in pain he couldn’t even begin to imagine. 

He was going to find Riz. No matter how long it took.

+

The first thing Riz noticed when he came to was the cottony dryness of his mouth, his lips cracking and his tongue coming away tasting copper when he swiped it across the rough surface. The second was the ache in his temples, pounding incessantly from the inside of his head against his skull and sending shocks of pain as far as his fingertips.

The third was that Baron was still here, their unshaking smile mere inches away from Riz’s face and bone-white fingers resting gently against his arms. 

“Good morning, Riz Gukgak,” Baron said, and gods, it was really creepy how their mouth didn’t move at all when they were speaking, those empty black eyes boring deep into Riz’s. “Today, you will make a body for Baron.”

Riz snarled, a guttural sound pulled from the most feral parts of himself, parts he had long since shoved away. It sat uncomfortably, in this suburban house, a far cry from the pastels and the worn couch and the white-painted paneling along the windows. “I’m not making you  _ shit _ ,” he shot back, twisting his wrists against their bonds and kicking out the best he could when his ankles were tied to the legs of a chair. (All he really succeeded in doing was pushing the abrasive material against his skin, rubbing the skin raw in some places, but hey, he tried his best.) “What even made you in the first place?”

“You will make me a body, Riz Gukgak,” they repeated, voice still soft and shivery like a spider’s legs on bare skin, but somehow more insistent, sinister, threatening. Baron moved, quicker than Riz could see, bone-white fingers gripping his throat with worrying strength. Riz could barely breathe, voice no more than weak gasps as their grip tightened. Spots danced in the corners of his vision, darkness growing bigger with each passing second. Their fingers tore away from his throat, and Riz sucked in a lungful of air, coughing madly, roughing up his throat like sandpaper. 

Baron clicked their tongue, little ‘tch, tch, tch’ sounds to match the wagging of their finger in the air, as uniform as the steady, ticking hand of a clock. “That is not very nice treatment for your romance partner, Riz Gukgak,” they said. “You are so mean to Baron.”

“You’re not even real,” Riz hissed, voice hoarse and rough. “None of this is real,  _ Baron _ .”

They seemed to not hear any of what Riz said, instead pacing slow, even circles around the chair he was tied to, the room silent but for the harsh, jagged breaths escaping Riz as he recovered from nearly asphyxiating, and the soft clicking of Baron’s shoes against the lacquered hardwood floors. (Damn, Riz had taste, even if he had made this whole house drunk and even if none of it was real anyways. These floors were great.)

Riz dug his claws into the palm of his hand — some of them were jagged, uneven, cutting shallowly against the softer skin. Against a haze of fog, Riz recalled being dragged towards the mirror, claws catching on the shoddily placed boards of the floor at his office. Gods, how long ago had that been? Long enough to lie about an entire house, clearly; and he felt something pressing against the edges of his memory, a hazy dream of hands on his legs and lies spat out through clenched teeth. 

“You made me real, Riz Gukgak,” Baron said, fingers gripping Riz’s shoulders from behind, tighter, tighter, until Riz was sure they would bruise, the shadow of a hand imprinted on his skin, a reminder. Even when it healed and faded, Riz would remember. “Your romance partner deserves a face, do you not agree?” Their fingers dug into Riz’s shoulders, iron grip pressing past skin and muscle to hit bone, the unbending material shifting beneath their touch. Riz winced, writhing, needing to get away— 

“It is so mean, to have me stuck like this… forever…” Their fingers released from Riz’s shoulders, the pain disappearing and filling in with a pulsing ache, pouding in time with the hammering in his head. Baron’s face appeared in front of him, and what Riz wouldn’t give to free his arms and sock this creepy little skeleton across the face. “You gave me our first date, and you gave me this beautiful home,” they whisper, advancing slowly towards Riz. “Why are you being so hurtful, Riz Gukgak? You cannot give your romance partner a face?”

A bottle of light, barely amber-coloured liquid appeared in their hands. They unscrewed the bottle ever-so-slowly, a pungent scent filling the air and causing Riz’s eyes to water as they brought the open mouth closer. “You already know the consequences if you do not give me what I want,” Baron said, and Riz swallowed thickly, pressing his lips together in a thin line.

“You are so fucked up,” Riz spat out from between clenched teeth, keeping his mouth as far away from the lip of the bottle as he could. “Really? You’re really going to get me drunk, or— or make me do some sort of snuff powder until I start saying whatever the fuck you want to hear?” 

Baron didn’t respond, instead gripping Riz’s chin and pulling him upwards, running an ivory finger along his bottom lip, the bone-like skin snagging on one of his fangs. “I do not like being the bad one, Riz Gukgak,” they said, and if he wasn’t  _ tied to a fucking chair _ Riz would probably be a little more convinced of Baron’s apparent goodness. “But you are so tricky sometimes.”

Their fingers shifted from Riz’s mouth to his nose, pinching it shut as their other hand brought the bottle upwards. Riz kept his lips pressed together as long as he could, but he could only go without air for so long, and his lips fell apart, sucking in a lungful of air before the glass lip of the bottle was against his mouth, that horrid amber liquid spilling into Riz’s throat. He swallowed — it was either that or choke, and at this point Riz knew that Baron wouldn’t save him — and it burned on the way down. 

Riz had drank before — sleeping over at Fabian’s often resulted in them breaking a lot of laws, usually with some of Bill’s secret stash of snuff powder or Hallariel’s cellar full of vintage elven wine — but he had always been surrounded by people he trusted, people that would bring him back if he went to far and slowly feed him water when he inevitably took more than his tiny goblin frame could handle. But this? His fake romance partner, Baron, who was somehow real enough to force some sort of liquor down his throat, was the only person Riz had seen in what felt like at least a day and a half, and Riz wasn’t even sure if he needed to eat or drink in this mirror dimension but he sure couldn’t handle a whole bottle of liquor when he drank it all in the span of ten minutes.

Mere moments passed before Riz started to feel the effects, brain starting to feel both heavy and light at the same time, barely able to keep a train of thought for longer than a few moments before it slipped away like fine sand through his cupped hands. Distantly, he noticed Baron stepping away, sitting on the couch in front of him and setting the empty bottle on the floor. 

“Tell me, Riz Gukgak” they say, whispers surrounding Riz and shivering their way down his spine. “Tell me what I look like, the person you  _ love _ .” 

Love? Riz wasn’t sure what love was, really — sure, his mom and dad loved each other, and Kristen loved Tracker, but it was hard to Riz to understand what that was. What it would feel like, for him. (‘Course, he also only had one friend until he was 14 and that was his babysitter, so he really didn’t have the best frame of reference for anything involving love in any form other than familial.) His mind tried to conjure up — something, Riz wasn’t fully sure what; his dream date? Someone he would take to Basrar’s, would buy ice cream for and smile and laugh and talk with as the sun set. Someone he would consider taking to visit his father’s grave, all the way in Cravencroft Cemetery; someone he would want to tear down all these damned walls for. 

Slowly, an image began to form in his brain, of dimpled cheeks and a bright, wide, dashing grin, of broad shoulders and lean, muscled arms, of a shock of silvery hair atop a face with an eye that sparkled brighter than any precious gem. “You… Fabian,” Riz managed to get out, tongue leaden and heavy in his mouth. He barely processed any of what he was saying before it left his mouth, but the words kept spilling out. “I like looking at Fabian, he’s got a real nice smile…” The corners of his own lips tugged upwards before Riz could even to think to control his expression, a soft smile spreading across his face. “‘N I think ‘s real cool when he jumps off things, or— or rides his stupid bike ‘round ‘n I get mad ‘cause it won’ let me ride with him.”

Baron hissed, examining every inch of their fingers, legs, clothes, before standing abruptly, the forgotten bottle falling as it hit their foot with enough force to shatter it against the floors.  _ Hope that didn’t scratch,  _ Riz caught himself thinking, eyes tracking the way the shards glittered in the sunlight falling through the window like the joy in Fabian’s eyes when he was on the Bloodrush field or laughing over a particularly dumb joke of Kristen’s. “The truth, the truth, why are you being so honest?” they growled, slowly advancing towards the chair. “Tell me! What I look like, who I  _ am _ …” 

“I don’t like you,” Riz says flatly, brows furrowing and lips forming a small pout as Baron moved towards him. “You’re not very nice, and you keep me tied to this chair, and you’re really creepy.”

Baron moved, lightning quick, and grabbed at Riz’s wrists, tight enough to leave a mark. “Then fix me, Riz Gukgak. You made Baron so creepy… so rude to me…” 

“Why can’t you just give yourself a face, huh?” Riz said, poking at a spot he hoped would hurt. “You’re too weak, can’t even give yourself a face like the rest of us.” He kinda liked being drunk, the way all the tension just slipped from his body, loosening his every joint and flowing through his veins like fire. His tongue was too heavy for his mouth but still flicked with wit, and it wasn’t like Riz was going to stop himself when it was the only act of rebellion he could still find it in himself to muster. 

The biggest thing that changed about Riz when he got drunk was his thoughts — it wasn’t that they moved slower, or that they got louder; it was more that Riz could just feel them faster, and see them clearer. And couldn’t be bothered to stop them from running their full course in his head before retreating to the sidelines, instead of pushing anything he wasn’t fond of to the side. It wasn’t a welcome change, and Riz always woke up the day after with a wicked hangover and the lingering fear that he had said something he shouldn’t have. 

Baron went silent. Through a haze of their creation, Riz watched closely — considering how much they’d talked so far, trying to convince Riz to lie more, give them more power, it was uncharacteristic and unsettling of them to be quiet. But their face was unchanging, unreadable, and Riz would be lying to himself if he said he knew what was going on behind that bone-white mask. “If you like Fabian so much,” Baron hissed out, “tell me about him.”

Some deep, far corner of Riz’s brain that was still lucid sounded off an alarm — why would Baron want him to talk about Fabian, if not to manipulate him? But the rest of him was very much not sober, and tired of always keeping his words on the tip of his tongue, never leaving his mouth no matter how much he wanted to just tell someone, anyone, that Fabian was filled with a blustering bravado to cover up for how big his heart actually is and how every time he calls himself Fabian’s best friend it hurts as much as it tastes sweet, because he’ll never be any more than that.

Words spilled past his lips before he had the chance to hold them back, every thought that even had the audacity to flit into the front of his mind being shot out into the open as soon as they were coherent. How he wanted to go to Basrar’s with Fabian, and kiss him and taste whatever stupidly fancy ice cream flavour he’d chosen that day on his tongue. How he wanted to be given Fabian’s letterman jacket to wear during games, and would sit in the bleachers,  _ SEACASTER _ written in bright white across his back and arms absolutely engulfed by the sheer amount of fabric. How Riz had dreamed, again and again, of their first kiss, of a kiss under the moonlight or at prom or in the middle of the day or on the seat of the Hangman, wherever, it wouldn’t matter, it would just matter that it was him and Fabian and the endless infinities ahead of them.

Baron let out a laugh, walking forward and caressing Riz’s cheek, fingers cold against his flushed skin. “You are so good with words, Riz Gukgak,” they said, a shiver running down Riz’s spine at the contact. “But surely, you cannot think this would happen? Fabian, he cannot love someone like you.”

A sour taste filled Riz’s mouth, the weight of a truth told a thousand times hanging heavy on his shoulders. Of course none of this would ever happen. Fabian was cool! And straight! And in love with Aelwyn Abernant! Really, it was just stupid wish fulfillment for Riz to ever believe he even had a sliver of a chance.

And if he didn’t think that any of what he just described could ever be true…

“Shit,” Riz breathed out, watching horrified as Baron began to morph, limbs lengthening until they towered over Riz, their forever grin shifting into an all-too-familiar smirk, skin darkening and hair somehow growing into their scalp. “No, nonono _ no _ —”

Bile rose in Riz’s throat, and he threw up, vomit hitting his pants and shoes and the side of the chair he was still fucking tied to. He was so stupid, he should have seen this coming, how did he let Baron  _ do  _ this, fuck fuck  _ fuck _ —

Pitch-black eyes accompanied a familiar smirk, words enunciated so wrongly escaping a mouth that Riz had dreamed of kissing so often with a round tenor that haunted his dreams. Hands flexed against wrapped bandages, pushing through silvery hair that Riz wanted to run his own fingers through until it was a dishevelled mess.

Fabian Aramais Seacaster stared back at him, cheeks dimpling as he gave Riz a wry grin. “ _ Hello, The Ball _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all writers are filled with the innate desire to make their favourite characters suffer, i don't make the rules but i will say that this fic wont be ALL angst, thank you to a certain irl for letting me know that it was, in fact, just cruel enough to have baron turn into fabian
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!


	3. you better throw the first punch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which they explore the mirror dimension and find a familiar but not entirely welcome face
> 
> cw: canon-typical non-graphic violence

They decided to go to Seacaster Manor first, before searching the rest of their town for Riz. Get their bearings, figure out some of the rules of this place before taking on Baron. It helped Fabian a bit, to see something so familiar in the face of the loss of both his friend and his bike happening within an hour of each other. (Even if the house was still void of the familiar sounds of his mother gliding through the endless halls, and Cathilda cleaning or prepping for their next meal, and as much as Fabian hated it, Gilear’s constant bumble and droning voice.) 

Surprisingly (or not), Gorgug and Tracker were the only ones that had any kind of cooking skill, and they fixed up enough food from the huge Seacaster fridges and pantries to feed all six of them, a strange tension in the air that Fabian didn’t know how to break. He took a few bites of the food they’d made — some eggs, a lot of toast and butter and other spreads he didn’t even realize they had in this house, and Gorgug and Tracker were chewing on some raw sausages — but his stomach was twisted into knots, and everything he ate tasted like sawdust. It felt wrong, almost, to be sitting here enjoying himself and recuperating while Riz was somewhere with Baron, going through gods-knew-what at the hands of that creepy skeleton motherfucker. 

Fig reached into her pocket, groaning when she came up empty-handed. “Aw, damnit! I’m already out of cloves, these stupid rolls burn too fast…” 

“You know, you can always take some dragon snuff from the basement,” Fabian remarked dryly. “I still don’t understand why you smoke  _ cloves _ , of all things.” 

“Fuck off, cloves are a valid thing to smoke.” 

She swirled her fingers with glowing orange energy, a horrifyingly familiar shape greeting Fabian in tandem with a grin on her face.  A little rat appeared in Fig’s hands, high-pitched chittering accompanying the slow swishing of a tail, the sounds and sights of Fabian’s nightmares. “No, I  _ know _ you didn’t just Minor Illusion the sexy rat here and waste a spell slot on fucking with me,” Fabian said, voice steady despite the way that he was very quickly vaulting over couches and chairs to crouch near Adaine at the far end of the dining hall. “Stop fucking around, Fig, this isn’t—”

Fig, hands cupped to support the rat illusion, gave them all a look that was equal parts shock, disbelief, and confusion. “No fucking way,” she said, and in an instant, a swirl of flames surrounded her and reappeared behind Fabian, burning a fourth-level spell slot to Dimension Door and —  _ drop the rat down the back of Fabian’s jacket. _

The skittering feeling of clawed feet scrabbling for purchase on skin covered by thin fabric made Fabian scream in a rather unseemly manner, shaking himself until the rat dropped out of his jacked, honest-to-god  _ winked _ at him, and then scampered off. “What the  _ fuck _ , Figueroth?”

She gave him a devilish grin, mischief sparkling in her eyes. “Hey, Fabes, didn’t that rat seem a little too…  _ real _ ?”

Fabian let out a sharp laugh, too aware of the nerves that bled into it. “No… no no no no  _ no _ , it’s the same Minor Illusion spell you used in the cemetery. As horrifying as it is, it’s not any realer than Gilear’s chances with my mother.” Despite the very real memory of sexy mouse feet against his back.

“See, what’s ironic about that is your mom is probably fucking Gilear as we speak,” Kristen added, Fabian glaring at her from his perch. (He hated it so much, that Gilear — arguably the lamest person he’d ever met, and he was in  _ high school _ — could somehow attract the favour and affections of his mother, the inimitable and beautiful Hallariel Seacaster.) “So if that’s the simile you want to go with, I think you're out of luck.”

“Okay, well, fuck that, fuck the sexy rat,” Fabian replied, “and why the fuck is your illusion spell becoming real?”

Fig shrugged, immediately prestidigitating a small apple into her palm and grinning when it solidified, taking a toothy bite out of it and cocking an eyebrow towards Fabian. “I don’t know, but this apple seems pretty real to me.”

“Illusions are kinda like a lie,” Gorgug said, pulling his crystal out of his pocket and fiddling with the screen. “Right? Maybe this place just has cool physics like that.”

A grin spread across Fig’s face, and she tossed the apple towards Gorgug, who barely caught it, before she created a lit joint of cloves, taking a long drag before exhaling it. “That’s surprisingly cool, and  _ really _ useful when you’re a college of glamours bard.”

Adaine was poring over a map on the table — where she’d gotten it, Fabian didn’t know — and chimed in, “Does anyone have a non-magical way to find Riz?”

Heavy silence met her words, and she glanced up from the table long enough to catch the defeated looks on everyone’s faces. Fabian knew he wasn’t any better. They’d leaped through with nary a plan, and aside from Baron’s monologue that had really only established that they were creepy as shit, and that Riz was likely with them, they had so little knowledge about this mirror world and how everything worked within it. But even as Fabian caught these glaring flaws, and berated himself internally for it, a part of him knew that there was nothing else to glean, and that they’d have to get creative to find Riz and bring him home safely. 

Adaine let out a soft sigh, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Alright, well, I didn’t want to resort to this considering I can only cast it twice a day, but I know Locate Creature. The limitations on the spell mean it’ll take a while to cover all of Elmville, but with Gorgug’s van we should be able to get through at least a third of the town today.” 

“I’ll come with you,” Fabian said before anyone else could even open their mouths. If they happened to find Riz today, it was imperative and necessary that Fabian would be there to assist in the rescue. “No objections? Good.” 

“Wait, I object—” Fig started, but Fabian was already out the door and heading towards the van. He should probably sit in the backseat, considering Adaine would probably want the front to do her magic stuff and Gorgug was the one that actually knew how to drive, and he could spread himself out completely now that he was the only other one in the van. 

Gorgug and Adaine exited the house soon after, Adaine saying, “You know, you could have at least let us establish the system we’ll use for this search before running off to make sure no one would claim your spot,” as she opened the passenger side door and hopped in, Gorgug sliding into the driver’s seat and starting the car, pulling out of Seacaster Manor’s driveway.

“I just wanted to make sure I could be there when we find The Ball,” Fabian replied, propping his feet against the window and resting his head against the seat at the other end. “Besides, I’m the only martial-classed person here aside from Gorgug, and since he’s driving, I figured at least one of us should be able to act as a lookout defenseman.”

“That’s really sweet of you,” Gorgug commented, not even sparing Fabian a glance as he began to drive through the downtown and east ends of Elmville. 

Cool blue light began to spill from the right side of the van as Adaine began to cast the spell. “I am not  _ sweet _ ,” Fabian protested, “I’m dashing and courageous!”

“And have a surprising amount of foresight,” Adaine added, turning to regard Fabian, eyes glowing with pure blue light. (If he was being honest, it always creeped him out a little when he couldn’t see Adaine’s eyes because of her magic, and it didn’t help that her glasses managed to endlessly refract this glow.) “Locate Creature is a concentration spell, so on the off chance that we do run into some monsters here I won’t be able to do anything to fight them if we want to make sure we get full use out of the spell.”

“See, I’m smart.” 

Gorgug must have hooked up his phone to the aux cord, because some sort of metal — really, once he’d met Zelda he had been introduced to too many kinds of metal and Fabian could  _ not _ keep them all straight in his head — was playing through the van’s speakers, a lot quieter than normal for something like metal but hey, Fabian wasn’t complaining. A comfortable semi-quiet settled over the van, but Fabian couldn’t stop his feet from tapping against the window, restless energy channelling outwards. He liked keeping busy — it helped to distract from whatever thoughts were filling his brain at the moment, and being stuck in a car with little to do and even less to interact with was not his idea of a good time. 

His mouth moved before his brain could process what was leaving it. “I wonder what Aelwyn’s doing right now.”

Adaine rolled her eyes, a movement Fabian somehow still could catch at this angle and with her eyes glowing blue. “Oh, come on, you’re really going to bring up my bitch sister in a car where I physically can’t get away from you? What a low blow.”

Fabian swung his legs down from where they rested against the window, leaning forward to make better eye contact with Adaine. “She’s hot, Adaine! And also gone! I was going to suggest we look for her in Fallinel and visit my grandfather over spring break but some people thought that would be a bad idea.”

“Yeah, because there’s even worse racism there than in Elmville,” Gorgug said. “Remember that time that person in the mall said to Riz—”

“Okay, yes, let’s not bring up the one and only time I’ve had to pay bail for myself,” Fabian interrupted hastily, a sudden rush of heat filling his cheeks. “And fine, fair point, I guess I shouldn’t punch my grandfather or any other relatives so it’d probably be a bad idea to go somewhere with rampant prejudice.”

Adaine stifled a laugh between pressed-together lips, shaking her head ever so slightly. “I still can’t believe  _ you _ decked the guy — if we were bailing out anyone for assault that time I would have thought it would be Riz.”

“I mean, Kristen very nearly joined me,” Fabian said, and they all shared a laugh over that, the memory replaying in Fabian’s head in glimpses between the sensation of bones and cartilage giving beneath his fist, of visceral anger on Kristen’s freckled face, Tracker physically holding her back from joining the fray. He didn’t regret a second of that fight, even if his mother gave him a lecture lasting nearly an hour once she’d paid bail.

“But why my  _ sister _ ?” Adaine asked once the moment passed. “She’s a bitch! She just follows whatever my parents want and since she’s the golden child she can do whatever she fucking wants with absolutely zero repercussions.”

Fabian shrugged, tapping his fingers against the compartment between the two seats in the front. “She’s really fucking hot, Adaine. And she’s fun, you saw her at that party!”

She scoffed, flicking Fabian in the forehead before turning her eyes back to the road. “She was fucking insane at that party, Fabian, and she tried to kill all of us! She was also willingly working with  _ Kalvaxus _ that whole year, or did you conveniently forget?”

A sigh escaped Fabian’s lips. This was exactly why the number one rule in the Bro Code was never to mess with anyone’s siblings, it  _ always _ got messy and put walls up where they shouldn’t belong. “Look, even you can’t deny that she’s incredibly attractive when she’s ‘insane,’ and besides, even if she  _ was _ working with Kalvaxus, that just proves she has a sense of adventure? And really, she didn’t know  _ who _ she was working for anyways because of that nasty Modify Memory bullshit, so, I think I’m still right here.”

“Do you even hear yourself right now?” Adaine grabbed the tip of Fabian’s ear, pinching it just hard enough for him to feel it. “Reasoning away all her bad qualities, god, you’re so fucking whipped for someone you’ve talked to all of twice,” she continued, voice bitter and increasingly tense, like a rubber band stretched taut and just about to snap.

“Can’t a guy get his kisses in in peace?”

“Not when it’s with my sister, bitch!”

“Guys,” Gorgug said, voice filling with anxiety. “Do you see that thing on the road or am I just hallucinating?”

Fabian leaned forward, squinting through the windshield. Gorgug slowed down the van significantly as they got closer, and a familiar face began to take shape beyond the glass. Blond hair braided into two neat plaits, a pressed white shirt tucked neatly into a pleated, dark blue skirt, white socks ringed at the top with that same royal blue that hit just beneath the knee, a devilish grin and eyes glimmering with mischief brighter than the sparkle in any diamond. “No fucking way,” he heard from his left, Adaine muttering beneath her breath as the same recognition filled her veins. 

“Is that—” Fabian blinked once, twice, to make sure this apparition wouldn’t scatter with the wind, noticing the grin growing and showing off nearly-fanged canines, sharp and glinting in the sunlight. “ _ Aelwyn?” _

+

They were thirty, maybe forty feet away at this point, the van rolling to a slow stop. Aelwyn grinned, an unfamiliar madness in her eyes. “Hello, my dearest Fabian,” she said, an icy white sphere of energy growing in the palm of her right hand as she approached the van, one agonizingly slow step after another. “Be a darling and get out of the car, won’t you? I’d hate for you to get stuck in the crossfire while I murder my bitch of a sister.”

“Oh, you fucking  _ bitch _ ,” Adaine hissed out, but Fabian knew that she was still holding onto the Locate Creature spell. Barely half an hour had passed since they left Seacaster Manor and Fabian had no doubts that Adaine wanted to get as much use out of the spell as her limited spell slots at that level would allow. Fabian watched as she reached for the door handle, eyes still locked on Aelwyn — but Aelwyn’s sharp blue eyes caught the movement, and she let out a fierce cry as she loosed a swirling blast of ice and snow. 

In one smooth movement, Fabian pulled the side door of the van open and leapt out onto the pavement, catching himself in a roll and popping up just in time to see Adaine take the full brunt of the blast, icicles slicing into the thick material of her jacket and ripping open shallow wounds, a scream escaping her mouth and the arcane blue leaving her eyes. Gorgug let out a roar, donning his headphones before grabbing his axe and rushing at Aelwyn, shaking ice out of his hair. A few scrapes and slashes dotted his arms and chest, but they did little to impede him as he swung, axe smashing against a shield of runes and sending cracks throughout the glowing sphere. 

“Aelwyn, what the fuck?” Fabian yelled. She disappeared just as Gorgug attacked again, axe clanging against the pavement where she stood not even seconds before, a flash of blue light swirling next to Fabian as she reappeared. “Wh— I— what are you attacking Adaine for?”

Aelwyn let out a laugh, high-pitched and manic. “Because I love tormenting my dear younger sister, of course!” Her pupils contracted until they were pinpricks of dark against a sea of stormy blue, the grin on her face leaning more towards insane than attractive. “But I would never hurt you, my darling — wait for me here, once I’ve dealt with stupid little Adaine and that oaf of a driver you can get your kisses in, alright?” She grabbed his jacket, pulling him into a deep, messy kiss before vanishing, the scent of her perfume the only thing left behind. 

“Did you fucking do this?” Adaine yelled, eyes blazing with rage as she turned towards Fabian. “You fucking summoned a fake Aelwyn, what the hell?” She blinked, eyes filling again with arcane magic before disappearing, the glimmering outline of her eyes the last to vanish.

“All I did was talk about her!” Fabian shouted into the still air, pulling his sword from its sheath. Aelwyn reappeared, Adaine immediately at her side. The air crackled with energy as Aelwyn shot bolts of blue into the air, the clouds, the ground below. Adaine shot off three blasts of her own magic, aiming for whatever it was Aelwyn had just done, but Aelwyn stomped on her foot as she did so, throwing the blasts off their course.

Four swirling masses of elements grew around Gorgug, surrounding him fully. He lashed out, slicing into the chest of a rock elemental, but one of the air elementals shot a small bolt of lightning towards him, sending sparks through his body. Fabian ran, leaping off the hood of the van to decapitate the air elemental and turned on a second, but they were all ignoring him in favour of Gorgug. “Hey, over here, you stupid breeze!” he yelled, hoping to get its attention, but it stayed firmly trained on Gorgug, summoning gusts of wind to grab him and lift him ten, twenty feet in the air before slamming him back down, the rocky fists of another elemental pounding down on his prone body.

Fabian turned back to look at the van, and just managed to catch sight of Adaine hitting Aelwyn with a nasty right hook, then immediately vanishing, Aelwyn wiping blood from her nose before following behind. With a mighty roar, Gorgug managed to crush another elemental, then immediately swung and decapitated a third. The fourth didn’t last long, with Fabian leaping off of Gorgug to slash it twice across the chest and Gorgug slamming it out of existence with a final blow from his axe. 

Adaine and Aelwyn blink back into existence right in front of the van, Aelwyn pinned to the ground but with her hands entangled in Adaine’s hair. “You… fucking…  _ asshole _ …” Adaine said through gritted teeth, summoning a blast of blue fire into her hand and holding it up against Aelwyn’s face, close enough to singe some of the hair on that side. 

“Aelwyn, this isn’t you! Stop trying to kill your sister!” Fabian yelled out, watching as both Abernants turned to face him.

Aelwyn began to laugh, the calm and familiar sound slowly becoming more maniacal and frantic. “This isn’t me?  _ This isn’t me?”  _ She released Adaine’s hair, calm even in the face of a firebolt against her neck. “Well, it’s surely how my  _ dear, sweet younger sister _ sees me, isn’t it? It’s sure how you see me,  _ isn’t it? _ ” 

A soft gasp escaped Gorgug. “You guys… I think you guys both made this Aelwyn when you were arguing in the car.”

“No fucking way,” Adaine and Fabian said in unison, glaring at the other as soon as it was uttered. Aelwyn laughed from where she was pinned to the ground, and Adaine loosed the firebolt, Fabian turning away from the surely nasty sight of Aelwyn’s beautiful face burning off. When he turned back, her body had vanished entirely, not even a hair off her head left behind. 

Adaine peeled off her jacket, pulling a box of bandages out of one of the pockets and began slapping plasters all over her various cuts and bruises. “Great. Just fan-fucking-tastic.”

“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been so obviously wrong about what Aelwyn’s like,” Fabian muttered, grabbing some of the bandages and helping Gorgug tend to his own wounds. “She’s not that much of a bitch, I don’t know why you think of her so badly.”

“And you being too fucking whipped to see what she’s really like isn’t any worse?” Adaine retorted. “She didn’t even  _ try _ and attack you! You think Aelwyn would show that kind of mercy?”

“I mean… considering what this Aelwyn was like, maybe you were both wrong?” Gorgug said, frowning at the tears in his hoodie created by the shards of ice in Aelwyn’s initial attack. “You two arguing about it and believing in your own wrong version of Aelwyn made this version we had to fight.”

“That makes sense.” Adaine scowled. “I hate how much that makes sense.”

“So maybe you two should talk things out, make sure we don’t—”

Fabian stood up, sheathing his sword before walking towards the van and sliding back into the backseat. “Riz is waiting. We can talk things out once he’s been found.” His voice was clipped, detached. He didn’t sound like himself.

Gorgug and Adaine shared a look, one that Fabian didn’t even try to pretend he ignored, but before long they had both piled into the van, Adaine calling forth that same blue energy as they kept making their way through Elmville. It was barely one o’clock, the sun high in the sky and the spring air stagnant but for the occasional breeze, and yet the air in the van was tense, thick enough to cut with a knife.

There was nothing but silence for the next hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still can't believe i rewatched an entire episode of FH to make the battle semi-realistic but then didn't end up using much of it anyways because writing and dnd mechanics don't fit together well
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!


	4. we won't eat our words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which gorgug gets some advice, adaine has a vision, and riz learns about the situation he's stuck in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE THE RATING AND WARNING CHANGES  
> TW: graphic descriptions of violence from the italicized section onward, pretty much, summary at the end
> 
> title taken from 'monster' by dodie

To say that things were awkward was an understatement. 

Fabian stormed off to his room the moment Gorgug pulled back into the driveway, face carefully held and expressionless, and neither Gorgug or Adaine followed. Adaine  _ really _ didn’t want to be around him at that moment, anyways. 

Kristen let out a gasp as soon as they walked in, sitting up from the couch and accidentally sliding Tracker off her lap and onto the carpet below. “What the fuck, why are you guys hurt?”

“Fabian summoned a fucking Aelwyn monster, that’s what,” Adaine said, collapsing into a chair and slowly extricating herself from her jacket, allowing Kristen to poke and prod at her and eventually cast a healing spell, the room filling with faint divine light. Gorgug gave her a look from where Tracker was healing him, and Adaine sighed, rolling her eyes as she added, “I helped. Kinda. Possibly.”

“What d’you mean, ‘summoned an Aelwyn monster?’” Fig asked, fingers plucking at the strings on her bass. (Somehow, there was an amp plugged in beside her, cord spilling out onto the floor and into the nearest electrical socket. Leave it to Fig to figure out how to get a music setup in roughly two hours.)

“Exactly what I mean,” Adaine said, pulling her jacket back on now that most of the wounds had sealed over and pulling a mug of hot chocolate from its pocket. “We were talking about Aelwyn and I guess the combined lies from both my side and his compiled enough to create an entire illusion monster of Aelwyn that then tried to kill me. Cost me an entire half hour of use on Locate Creature ‘cause I had to drop concentration.” The hot chocolate was on the perfect side of hot, creamy chocolate filling Adaine’s mouth and soothing the nerves still jumping about in her stomach. “Be careful what you say here.”

The others shared an uneasy look as the implications of what Adaine described set in. If something as small as their skewed perceptions of Aelwyn could combine into a malevolent monster prepared to kill, Adaine did  _ not  _ want to see what bigger lies could create. 

“Gorgug,” she said, draining the last dregs of her hot chocolate as she did so, “I’m going to trance so we can head out again as soon as possible, and there’s really not much we can do in the meantime that’s as reliable, so— just be ready, I guess.”

He nodded, and Adaine disappeared into the hallway, likely making use of one of the many guest rooms of Seacaster manor to rest up and trance in. Tracker finished healing Gorgug, the silvery glow fading from around her as his wounds began to seal over. “So,” Gorgug said. He looked around the room — the sun, still bright in the sky, at least a few hours from sunset — “What should we do until Adaine’s rested?”

Fig nodded over to the coffee table. “I found these board games buried in one of the four storage rooms they have, we could try and learn to play one of them?”

“You didn’t play any while we were gone?”

“They’re all so complicated,” Kristen groaned, “one of them literally has like four pages of rules and it’s the smallest box. Can’t I just spoon my girlfriend in peace?”

Tracker looked up from where she was reading through the instructions of one of the games. “Babe, if you win we can go find a guest room and makeout, they can’t say anything.” She shuffled a set of cards with yellow backing, an array of strange symbols on the front sides of the cards. “This game seems simple, why don’t we give it a try?”

They all took a seat at the table, Tracker explaining the game as she set up the rest of the cards. Gorgug didn’t really follow until they played a few rounds, and if his brain shortcircuited and made him yell “Any plant!” when the category was Edible Plant, well, he was never known as the smartest of the bunch anyways. It lifted a weight from his shoulders, the combination of Fabian’s irritation and Adaine’s annoyance momentarily gone.

Laughter and screams and a light air filled the room, and tension released from Gorgug’s jaw and shoulders that he didn’t even realize he was holding. At some point, the games were set aside, giving room for a conversation to flow, smooth like water through a babbling brook. 

“You two are gross,” Fig teased as Kristen leaned over to plant a kiss against Tracker’s forehead.

“You’re just jealous you don’t have anyone to get your kisses in with,” Kisten shot back, an amicable smile on her face.

Fig rolled her eyes, taking another drag of a cigarette. “I don’t need anyone, I’m a famous rockstar.”

“I literally have a girlfriend,” Gorgug added, “Fig’s the only single one here.”

“Oh yeah, how’s Zelda?”

“Our anniversary is soon, I think,”” Gorgug replied. He should probably think about putting together the gift he knew he wanted to make for forever, but — there was something nagging in the back of his head, something he was trying his best to ignore.  _ C’mon, Gorgug, no use in thinking about it if it’s not going to go anywhere _ .

Leave it to Fig to smell it like a bloodhound, she was so good at catching all those things Gorgug would rather leave alone. The grin on her face told Gorgug she knew there was more to the story. “Nothing else going on?”

Gorgug scowled, face heating. “Oh, of course you’re gonna ask in the place where I can’t lie.”

“Well?”

“It’s—” Gorgug let out a heavy sigh. Even he wasn’t fully sure of what was going on, and he didn’t want to ruin any of the admittedly great things that he had going for him. But he saw what had happened with Aelwyn; who knew if outright lies would create something even worse? “I think I like Ragh.” His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, and his face flooded with a hot rush of shame as soon as the words escaped him. It felt … wrong, almost? Gorgug knew he would never cheat on Zelda, but there was just some— some guilt, almost, or shame over having feelings for someone that wasn’t his current partner. It wasn’t normal, it couldn’t be right—

“Oh, that’s not a bad thing, though?” Tracker said, and all the shame flooded out of Gorgug, replaced with cool disbelief. 

“It— what?”

Tracker’s face wasn’t judgemental, or grossed out, or any of the other things Gorgug had been worried about seeing. “My Uncle Jawbone, he’s — I mean, obviously nothing recently because he’s monogamous with Sandralynn right now, but he’s polyamourous. Has dated and loved multiple people at once. Y’know?”

Gorgug took that, sat with it for a bit, the concept rolling around in his brain a bit before it could find the right crevices to settle in. “So— it’s okay that I like Ragh?”

“I mean, yeah.” Tracker gave Gorgug a reassuring smile, and he tried his best to return it. (Even if it probably ended up being shaky and a little less sure than he would have liked.) “If you want, I’m sure Jawbone would be more than happy to talk with you when we get back.”

“That would be— it’d be nice, maybe.” It was a bit earth-shaking for Gorgug, to have all these fears and worries be given some rhyme and reason to their irrationality. If him liking Ragh was fine, well — what had he spent the past year beating himself up for? 

A crash sounded from one of the rooms in the back of the house, and they all exchanged a concerned glance, Kristen immediately leaping up from the table. “I’ll get it.” The air of joy that Fig and Tracker had worked so hard to build in the past few hours dissipated, and tension hung in the air like the static before a storm.

+

_ A house, not unlike Fig’s old house with Sandralynn. Sunlight slanted in through the windows — sunset, or sunrise? Adaine wasn’t sure which. The rooms were barely furnished, bare walls peering up against hardwood floors, a singular table in this room with two chairs around it. It looked like a dining room, albeit a really bare one. Adaine stepped out of the room, into the equally empty hallway. _

_ As soon as she stepped out, a crash sounded from the room nearest the front door. She ran, skidding into the doorway leading to what looked like a sitting room, blood draining from her face and bile rising in her throat at the sight in front of her.  _

_ Riz, on the hardwood floor. His arms were tied together, rope no more than a foot long between his wrists, and as she looked further Adaine could see the skin rubbed raw beneath, his ankles similarly bound. His eyelids fluttered shakily, eyes unfocused. A pool of blood had collected beneath him, leaking from a wound on his head and matting his unkempt curls with sticky red, and as Adaine kept looking she kept seeing more and more injuries; bruises mottling his green skin a sickly shade of purple, barely-healed gashes on his arms and legs. _

_ The figure above Riz held a broken bottle, blood dripping from the sharp edges onto the hardwood below. An unnerving grin on their face, all teeth and a mouth stretched too far, too wide.  _

_ Adaine recognized the face, and that scared her the most.  _

_ The last thing she saw, before the vision faded from the edges of her existence and she fell back into her body, was the familiar scar of one Fabian Aramais Seacaster, eye glinting with malice and blood spattered across his cheek. _

Adaine came to in the same room she began her trance in, a cold sweat sticking her shirt to her and sending shivers up and down her spine. Images from the vision flashed through her head, and she stumbled to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before the food from earlier made its way back out, the room filled with the sounds of her retching. She leaned back against the edge of the bathtub beside her, tipping her head up the ceiling and closing her eyes to quell the nausea still roiling in her stomach, pulling as many details as she could from the vision before it slipped completely through her hands like sand.  _ Riz… the house, like Fig’s… Fabian, and the bottle, and— _

She shuddered, swallowing back another rush of bile. The sand slipped from between her fingers, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to try and pick it up again. 

Someone knocked at the door to the bathroom, and Kristen walked in, a look of concern on her face as she took in the sight of a pale, clammy Adaine on the floor. “Holy fuck, are you okay?”

“Had a vision,” Adaine managed to get out, voice weak. “It— ngh, didn’t make much sense, let me write it down first.” She manifested a notepad and pencil from the pocket of her jacket, scribbling down everything she remembered before handing it to Kristen, letting her read it while she stood up and rinsed her mouth out at the sink. 

“Wait, you saw  _ Fabian _ in your vision? Hurting Riz?”

Adaine splashed some cool water on her face — why not, she was already rinsing her mouth out and her face was covered in a layer of clammy sweat anyways — before replying. “Yeah, which is the biggest reason I’m confused. Fabian would never hurt Riz.” 

“... Maybe Baron has control spells?”

Adaine turned her head around to look at Kristen so fast she was worried she gave herself whiplash. “No.”

Kristen shrugged. “You can never know until it’s too late.”

“We can’t let Fabian go out with us in the van anymore,” Adaine said, already rushing out of the room and into the main hallway, instantly picking up on the sounds of Tracker and Fig’s laughter from the living room, Gorgug’s soft chuckle a little harder to hear but still present. Fabian still seemed to be out of it, which worked in her favour. 

“I had a vision,” was the first thing Adaine said when she walked into the room, their eyes all shifting to her in a heartbeat. Kristen handed the notepad to Tracker, who passed it to Fig after skimming it, and Adaine was grateful that she didn’t have to explain what she’d seen again. “I— I know that we all want to trust Fabian, but there’s so much where we don’t fully know what we’re dealing with, and if Riz can get hurt this bad while we’re all here I want to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t come to pass.”

A beat of silence, and then— “We have to tell him, right?” from Gorgug. 

Adaine bit her lip, worrying at the skin as thoughts bounded around in her head, quicker and quicker the more they spiralled. “I don’t want to make things worse—”

“Make things worse for who?”

Fabian stood at the doorway to the room, bags under his eyes but other than that looking no worse for the wear. (Distantly, fleetingly, a pang of resentment shot through Adaine, that he could escape unscathed against a monster like her sister.) “For you,” Adaine said, because she’d be damned if she couldn’t at least stay honest in this hellscape where all her little lies would turn against her. 

He crossed his arms, a wary gleam entering his eye. “Well, please, don’t be afraid to share what would make things worse.”

Very hesitantly, Gorgug handed Fabian the notepad, who snatched it up and devoured the barely legible scratches on it, a flash of horror and shock appearing on his face before it was tamped down with steely neutrality. “I don’t—” He let out a laugh, full of disbelief. “Me? Hurting Riz? I hope you know how insane that sounds, even if you  _ are _ an Oracle.”

“We don’t know whether Baron has magic,” Kristen said, voice so tentative and gentle. “If there’s any chance of them controlling you, getting you to hurt Riz like that… well, it’d be better to keep you out of harm’s way in the first place, right?”

Fabian stared down at the notepad, a fire blazing beneath that wall of steel, just barely visible beneath his finely honed veneer. “What, you don’t think I’d be able to resist?”

“No, we just—” Fabian’s glare was scathing, and Adaine swallowed hard before continuing. This was what they had to do. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

He tossed the notepad towards the table in the middle of the room, not even trying to hide the anger on his face, the scowl that furrowed his eyebrows. “Great. I will stay in the background, the most  _ useless _ place for a fighter to be, because you don’t believe I can fight off a charm spell. Sounds like a fucking plan.”

“Fabian, wait—” Fig said, but Fabian had already disappeared again, into the nooks and crannies of the large manor where they wouldn’t be able to find him. They could try and look, but what would be the point? Fabian grew up here, he knew this house like the back of his hand, and Adaine doubted that they’d be able to find him if he really tried to hide. 

A tense silence settled over the remaining five of them, broken only by Adaine saying, “Alright, who’s coming in the van for another round?”

Distantly, across the house, a door slammed shut.

+

Riz came to slowly, in fits and starts, finding himself in a bed, staring up at a plain white ceiling. 

“Oh, good, you are awake.” Riz turned his head, and sitting beside the bed was the visage of none other than Fabian Aramais Seacaster, in that oh-so-familiar letterman’s jacket, broad shoulders filling out the red material. Joy flooded through him, then shock and anger as the memories came back, of Baron using him, using his feelings to create whatever it was that sat in front of him. Baron grinned, and it was clear from that they had no idea how to fully adopt Fabian’s mannerisms, and Riz could still set them apart in his head. He could still find the divide between the guy he liked and the creature that kidnapped him.

“What did you do to me?” Riz asked, and as he moved to sit up he realized his arms and legs were still tied up, a piece of rope roughly nine inches long still connecting his wrists and ankles, the rough rope chafing at skin already rubbed raw. 

That creepy grin stayed on Baron’s face. “I have decided you can be free. It is mean of me to keep my romance partner tied to a chair.” They stood, limbs devoid of that same fluid grace that Fabian moved with. “I will be right back.”

Riz held his breath until the door shut behind them, immediately scrambling towards the window. It was locked, but the lock was nothing against Riz’s sharp claws, coming apart with a few well placed scratches. He pulled the window up, swallowing at the sight of the two-storey drop that awaited him. But this was going to be his only chance — he was more free than he’d been in days (weeks? he didn’t know anymore, there was nothing linear or trustworthy in his memory), and if he got caught here there was no way Baron would let him near anything remotely close to an escape attempt. He didn’t know where his gun and briefcase were, but there wasn’t any time to look for them, and any stealth he tried to do while still tied up wouldn’t be a good idea. 

A quick search of the room didn’t yield anything sharp enough to cut through the rope, and his claws wouldn’t be enough unless he wanted to spend hours slowly severing each fibre. Two options: one, stay here and hope that another opportunity to escape would present itself; and two, jump out that damn window and pray he doesn’t break any legs falling. 

Riz swung his legs up onto the windowsill, a millisecond away from jumping as the door slammed open, turning in his shock to face Baron, anger glowering through the face they stole, through Fabian’s eye and high cheekbones and sculpted face. Quicker than Riz could even register, his throat was in their grasp, the breath squeezed out of him as they lifted him away from the window, holding him in the air, dangling, powerless, before throwing him onto the bed. “I was so nice to you, Riz Gukgak,” they hissed out, Riz coughing madly as he sucked oxygen into his lungs. “And you try and leave? Leave  _ me _ ?”

“You’re insane,” Riz choked out, voice hoarse and eyes watering. All he received for that was a scowl and a hand pressed against his throat, again, not hard enough to deprive him of air again but enough to send fear ricocheting down his spine. 

“I thought you loved me,” Baron whispered, leaning in. Their breath tickled Riz’s ear, the skin of their cheek brushing against his. “You love this face, don’t you? You trust me?”

Riz’s breath was coming faster, shorter, and he nodded the best he could, every synapse in his brain firing in horror of what could happen if he took another misstep. “Yes, yes, I trust you,” he managed to get out, and it wasn’t really a lie, he did trust Fabian, and if that was what it took to stay alive he could meld the two in his head for a second. The pressure on his throat eased immediately, an amiable and not unfamiliar grin, dimples and all, coming to Baron’s face. 

“Good. Now, I will get food and water for you,” they said, voice completely devoid of any malice it contained mere moments ago, full of a light and air to it that Riz could barely reconcile with what had just happened. “Stay here.” An unspoken ‘or else,’ filled the room, and a shudder passed through Riz’s body.

The door stayed open this time, and Riz could hear the sounds of Baron descending a flight of stairs, moving towards what he could only assume was the kitchen. He reached up, gingerly, fingers ghosting over his neck, the memory of an inescapable pressure sucking the air and life from him too recent for his liking. A shaky breath escaped him.

Option one, then. He would wait, and watch, and take the opportunity when it presented itself. Until then?

Riz would be trying his damnedest to not get killed on the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summary of chapter minus the graphic violence: adaine gets a vision of fabian hurting riz, and shares this with the other bad kids, who all decide that fabian shouldn't be let on anymore locate creature missions, in case baron uses a charm spell on him and can fulfill the vision she had. riz wakes up, freed from the chair he was tied to, and attempts to escape, but baron catches him.
> 
> true duality of a writer is being able to switch from fluff to angst with the snap of my fingers and that's pretty much what happened! why i keep writing riz getting hurt? we'll never know
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!


	5. not passive, just aggressive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which riz cannot remember what is real and what is fake, and fabian is (understandably) frustrated at how things are going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from 'the kids aren't alright' by fall out boy

It was an elaborate dance, a fine line to walk. Riz was freer, but at the cost of Baron’s interrogations every twenty minutes or so. “Do you trust me?” they had asked, over and over again, and when Riz’s life wasn’t in the immediate balance it was all too easy to forget that this world had physical, tangible consequences for his lies, something he re-discovered when he’d answered “yes,” his heart not fully in it, and was rewarded with a resounding crack across the jaw, cheek stinging in pain from the force of Baron’s palm.

“There is no use in  _ lying _ ,” Baron hissed as Riz stared up at them from the floor, a hand up against his cheek, a dull ache pounding in time with his heartbeat. “It is not enough if  _ I  _ believe it— no,  _ you _ must believe it. Or I will know, Riz Gukgak.”

Riz didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say that would sate Baron and be true. (And if he was being honest, there was something so gut-wrenchingly awful about seeing Fabian like this, his face contorting in anger, anger directed at Riz.)

“Do you trust me,” Baron said, and they said it in something closer to Fabian’s voice than anything they’ve ever said before, and Riz hated how his instinctual answer, looking into Fabian’s eyes, hearing the familiar timbre of his voice, was—

“ _ Yes _ ,” he managed to get out, and Baron seemed— pleased, almost, with that answer, Riz’s heart sinking as he realized that it must have had some shred of truth in it. Was it Baron that he trusted, or was it the idea of this being Fabian, the familiar face and the voice that haunted Riz in his dreams? 

Riz wasn’t sure he knew, and that scared him the most.

He quickly lost track of time, the combination of pieces of his memory missing, locked away in some hidden drawer he had yet to find the key to, and the way that Baron firmly kept all the windows covered, (“We don’t want a repeat of earlier,” they said, “it would be a disaster if you slipped between my fingers again,”) nothing but slivers of light making their way into the room. At some point Baron filled Riz with liquor again, his mind flying somewhere three stories away as he shuffled around the house (and at least he had that, at least he wasn’t tied to that stupid chair anymore, but his clothes stank of sweat and vomit and his wrists and ankles kept chafing against the rope, skin rubbed raw, and really, it was only a marginal improvement), and it was so much harder to remember that this wasn’t Fabian when the creepy voice and enunciation and doll-like permanent smile disappeared slowly with every passing moment. 

They — he — Fabian? — no, Baron, was so  _ sweet _ in the moments between the paranoia and the anger. A hand gently caressing Riz’s cheek coupled with the loose liquor-induced stupor he was in could easily take his mind off the new bruises forming around his neck, sickly purples and blues. It was Riz’s every fantasy, and it was his worst nightmare, and they swirled together in a cruel dance that left his head spinning. 

Time passed. Riz wouldn’t be able to tell you how much. He slept, at one point — curled up on the bed in the room that he tried to escape from. (“Like a little cat,” Fabian always said. Baron echoed the sentiment when he lay down next to Riz’s prone form. It sent unease snaking down his spine at the jolt of familiarity that shot through him when he heard it again, in Fabian’s voice, from Fabian’s mouth.) When he woke up, eyes bleary, head aching, body sore and tired and covered in bruises and cuts, he found himself in Fabian’s arms.

He had slept like the dead, no dreams, and consciousness was still too far away, sleep a heavy blanket he was having trouble pulling from over his head. His thoughts, normally so clear and quick, were sluggish and muddled. 

How many times had he dreamed of this exact scenario? Fabian’s arms, with their lithe strength, around him, holding him safe. Waking up in a bed that they shared, a bed that was  _ theirs _ . (Distantly, a warning sounded in Riz’s head, reminding him that this is a world of illusions and lies. It was covered easily by the fog of sleep, and Riz didn't hear it.) Riz knew it couldn’t be real, and yet he wanted it to be so badly…

“Good morning, the Ball,” Fabian said, voice soft, the hand he had around Riz making soft circles against his skin. “I hope you slept well.”

Riz let out a noise that was meant to be a “Yeah” but came out as more of a “nnghgm”. The bed was so warm, and he slept better than he had in weeks, and the heavy drapes of unconsciousness still clung stubbornly to him no matter how much he wanted to shake them off. 

A pause, a moment of stillness in what Riz could only assume was the morning air. 

“Do you trust me, the Ball?”

(Compared to yesterday, his voice was soft, quiet. Fabian stared off into the distance as he asked, hand still tracing soft patterns against Riz’s skin. It was the epitome of domesticity, it was the quiet future that he wanted so, so badly, and Riz was so tired, even after passing out for however long. He knew it wasn’t wise, but he leaned into every self-indulgent part of this fantasy he could.)

Riz looked up at Fabian’s face — at the familiar curve of his nose and lift of his cheekbones, at the silk eyepatch, at the scar just beneath it, at the cheeks that bloomed into dimples with his beautiful smile — and replied, “Always,” without a doubt in the world. 

+

Riz realized quickly that he  _ did _ , in fact, need to eat while here — hunger started gnawing at his stomach like a hellbeast as soon as the sleep slipped fully from his mind. “Do we have any food?” he asked, letting Fabian carry him down to the kitchen, if only because his own body was too weak to.

With a flourish of his hand, a bowl of cereal appeared in front of Riz. (Odd. Riz didn’t remember Fabian having illusion magic before. Then again, his memory had been pretty spotty recently.) He scarfed it down eagerly, the food sending energy back into his sore limbs. 

“You trust me, right?” Fabian asked as Riz worked on a second bowl of cereal.

_ A creature that looked like a puppet. The broken edge of a bottle glinting in the sunlight. Aching wrists. Loose thoughts. Baron? _

Riz couldn’t remember for the life of him who this ‘Baron’ was, and why Fabian asking that question made dizzying images he couldn’t understand flash through his mind. Fabian brought him here, didn’t he? 

“Y-yeah, of course,” Riz replied around a mouth of cereal, swallowing before he continued. “You’re my best friend.”

Fabian let out a soft laugh, taking Riz’s hand in his. (It was soft, a bit calloused from his sword, and so much bigger than Riz’s.) “Your memory’s so bad, the Ball. We’re dating, don’t you remember?”

A sharp pain lanced through Riz’s head, and he pulled his hand away from Fabian’s to grip his temples. “No, nonono,” he whispered, another ache pulsing between his ears. “You… Lies, this is Baron, this is all their fault—” Even as he said this, the image of ‘Baron’ was slipping from his mind, and no matter how much Riz wracked his brain, saw glimpses of Fabian from a memory that had him tied to a chair, remembered the feel of Fabian’s hand, so calloused and soft and big, against his throat, he couldn’t for the life of him remember how Baron was a part of this. 

He felt another set of hands on his own, pulling his hands away from his still-throbbing head. Riz looked up — Fabian, his gaze still soft despite the strength in his grip. “No, no, no,” Riz repeated, gaze flickering from Fabian to the wall to the ceiling to the bowl in front of him. “But. No. If Baron isn’t real, you brought me here, and you— you’ve—”

A choked sob escaped his lips. 

Fabian leered down at him, smile turning from cheery to creepy, eyes filling with a manic intensity. “What, you don’t think I’m capable of doing all that?” His hands gripped Riz’s wrists tighter, tighter, until Riz was squirming in his seat and felt like his wrists would snap if he didn’t get them away. “I thought you’d have stopped underestimating me by now,  _ the Ball. _ ”

“Stop— Fabian, stop, you’re hurting me—”

The strength of his grip on Riz’s wrists increased, briefly, before Fabian took his hands away, instead taking Riz’s hands in his — so gently, a jarring change from the death grip of not even thirty seconds ago. “Do you trust me, Riz?”

Riz wasn’t used to hearing his name —  _ Riz _ , not the Ball, not another usually well-meant nickname — from Fabian. It was disarming, to hear it be spoken so softly, earnestly — so soon after his eyes glinted with malice and his voice was rough with anger. 

“Yes,” he said, heart sinking. “Yes, I trust you.”

He hated himself, just a little, for knowing it to be true. 

+

Fabian dreamed. 

(He didn’t mean to fall asleep, but he was angry beyond belief — with Adaine, with Kristen, with Riz for getting stuck here in the first place — and he could only do so much to get the anger out without breaking his walls. It was easier to fall onto his bed — so familiar, even here — and forget it all, just for a little bit.)

Dreams weren’t something that came to Fabian easily. But his dreams were full of Riz, and he could see him clearer than crystal. Riz, at the beginning of freshman year, so awkward and handing out business cards like he was at a job expo; on the bloodrush field, blood spattered across his face and clothes, a crazed mania in his eyes reflected in the barrel of his smoking gun; in a booth across from him at Basrar’s, clutching his head against a brain freeze. Riz, again and again and again. 

Riz, covered in bruises. Riz, bleeding out on a hardwood floor. Riz, hurt and looking so, so small.

Whispers surrounded him, the voices of his friends, disembodied and quiet and cold.  _ This is why you should never have come here. This is why we leave you behind. Fabian Aramais Seacaster, how can we trust you? When you are fated to hurt one of our own? _

Two feline, yellow eyes opened in the dim room. Riz looked at Fabian, and he began to scream.

Fabian woke up in a cold sweat, heart pounding so hard it was all he could hear. The rich, wine-coloured silk sheets and cream duvet on his bed were twisted around his legs, a cool breeze coming in from the open windows at the other end of the room. He let out a breath, hating how it shook. 

The house was quiet —the clocks here didn’t seem to work, but it felt like it was around two in the morning. Fabian slipped out into the dark hallways of the manor — and even though they were so, so far away from home, at least he had this small piece of familiarity to hold onto, at least he still knew which floorboards creaked and how to navigate the stairs without falling. The breeze pressed a cool kiss against his forehead, shaking away the lingering clamminess of his skin.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Fabian climbed to the crow’s nest. When he was up here, it made Seacastar Manor feel more like the ship it was to begin with; like the  _ Hangman _ had found a way to sail the land instead of the seas. He understood why his papa loved the crow’s nest so much. 

(Memories flashed through Fabian’s head. The first time he ever climbed into the crow’s nest, riding his papa’s shoulders, a mere boy, and gazing in awe, not able to fully comprehend the sheer vastness of the ocean. Standing on the roof after the  _ Hangman _ was docked for its final time, looking up at the silhouetted figure of his father, with his telescope and his captain’s hat. The crow’s nest had always been his papa’s place, and after he’d killed him Fabian hadn’t wanted to come back up to the place that had always been his, theirs. And yet — it felt wrong to not.)

The stars weren’t nearly as bright and clear as they had been on the high seas, but Fabian could still pick out some constellations. The familiar patterns and swirls of light had always been there for Fabian, no matter how tiring the day — he could always look up at the stars and take comfort in their consistency. 

It was a bit cheesy, but — Fabian would talk to the stars.

They couldn’t respond, or judge, or give him an answer he wouldn’t like. They would simply sit, and listen, and send their light from a million miles away. It was comforting, to get the thoughts out of his head, and sometimes that was all he needed. Sometimes he didn’t need a response. 

“What if they’re right?” Fabian asked. His legs dangled over the side of the crow’s nest as he perched carefully on the edge of the railing, no fear of falling to the roof below. “What if that  _ is _ me? And I’m the one to hurt Riz?” He let out a breath, tipping his head up until all he could see was the wide swathes of dark, dotted with shimmering jewels of light. The sea and the sky weren’t that different, when he thought about it. “I don’t think I could live with myself if he gets hurt that badly, because of me.”

The stars, as always, had no response. 

Fabian stayed in the crow’s nest for the rest of the night, watching the sky lighten and fill with cotton candy streaks as the sun rose, slipping to the kitchen before the rest of the group was coherent to steal some bread and kippers before climbing back up and eating, quietly, alone. Adaine and Gorgug slipped out early, just as Fabian made it back to the crow’s nest with his breakfast, the van’s engine and the soft chatter from the kitchen the only sounds in the quiet morning air. From the look on Adaine’s face when they returned, they still hadn’t found him. 

Eventually, he swung down to the roof, traversing the familiar path to swing into his still-open bedroom window without alerting any of the others. Laughter bubbled up from the living room, but Fabian didn’t think he could handle any attempts to cheer him up today. Let alone the stares and pitying glances that would inevitably come from the vision Adaine had seen. 

Time passed. Fabian wouldn’t be able to tell you how much. He thought he heard the van starting again, but it was so faint he could be tricking himself. The laughter and chatter from the front of the house would quiet, soften, and Fabian had to convince himself that they weren’t talking about him. He stared up at his ceiling, letting thoughts pass through his mind like driftwood in the sea, and wondered if this was really where he was meant to be. 

His door slammed open, and he shot up, catching Kristen’s eyes as she stood in the doorway. “They found him,” she said, and that was all Fabian needed to grab his sword from the floor and push past her, some semblance of determination and drive back in his step. 

“Fabian, wait,” Kristen called, running after him, but Fabian didn’t, wouldn’t,  _ couldn’t _ stop. She grabbed his arm, tugged in an attempt to slow him down, and he spun around, anger and frustration filling him.

“What? You guys want me to stay behind,  _ again _ ?” He couldn’t help the bitterness, the frustration that seeped into his voice. “I know that none of you trust me right now, but I need this. I have to do this.” Fabian let the fear, the fatigue, the despair from the images in his dreams come through. If he couldn’t convince them with this— if he had to stay back, again— “I can’t just sit by, and— and let Riz get hurt. He’s my best friend, Kristen.”

“That— I wasn’t going to make you stay behind, I just— you look tired, dude.”

“So do you,” Fabian shot back. “Now let’s go.”

The ride was tense, Fabian refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. There was an air of anticipation, of adrenaline about to kick in. None of them knew what to expect when they got there — just that Riz was there, somewhere, and that Adaine’s vision had yet to come to fruition. 

They arrived at… a suburban house, not unlike the house Sandralynn had owned prior to moving into Mordred Manor with Jawbone. “He’s in there,” Adaine said. 

The house itself looked pretty innocuous — the sun was just beginning to set, painting the house in soft golden light. All the windows and curtains were drawn, and Fabian couldn’t hear anything from outside — either the house was soundproofed really well, or it was genuinely quiet inside. They exited the van, Gorgug in the lead as they cautiously approached the house. 

Gorgug grabbed the doorknob, and as soon as he did, the door burst from its frame, blasting Gorgug away and into Adaine. Fabian heard Kristen swear from behind him, Tracker immediately snarling as she began to transform into a wolf. 

A figure appeared in the doorway, and everyone stopped. 

In the now-empty doorway of this suburban house, the quick-fading sunlight illuminating his features, a terrifying grin on his face and mania in his eyes, was none other than Fabian Aramais Seacaster. 

“Sorry, what the  _ fuck _ ?” Fabian said before he could stop himself, unable to tear his eyes away from this— this doppelganger, this fake version of him. “Who are you? And why the fuck do you have my face?”

That terrifying grin stretched wider, and as Fabian watched in horror, his doppelganger’s pupils expanded until there was nothing to see but endless black. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m you.”

A blast of flame shot over Fabian’s shoulder, flicked away almost effortlessly by the poser in front of him. His smile turned almost instantly into a scowl, eyes focusing on Fig. “Now, now. We can’t have you six ruining my plans. I worked so hard to get everything in order.”

Gorgug ran up, swinging his axe down at the fake-Fabian. “Fabian, go find Riz!” he yelled, the clanging of metal on metal ringing out through the empty air as his axe was parried almost too easily. 

“I am  _ not _ leaving you to fight this  _ thing _ alone!” Fabian yelled back, unsheathing the sword of the Seacasters from his hip and slicing forward, managing to nick the side of his mirror image’s torso. 

“No, Gorgug’s right,” Adaine said, eyes glowing bright blue as she shot an arcane blast towards the fake Fabian, brows furrowing when he managed to jump out of the way. “It’d be bad if we confused you two in the battle. Go find him.”

Fabian grit his teeth, sheathed his sword, bit back an insult or two, and obeyed. He knew that they were right; he just hated that once again he was stuck where he’d be of the least use. Fabian wasn’t known for being perceptive. 

It didn’t take long to find Riz — the house was pretty small, with two main rooms coming off of the main hallway and a staircase leading up to a second floor, which Fabian assumed had some bedrooms. The first room was a kitchen — empty, aside from a bowl on the floor. 

The second — a living room. Nice hardwood floors, a couch on one end, a television on the other, large windows covered with sweeping drapes. It was dark; no natural light from the windows, and none of the lights were turned on, either. Distantly, Fabian could hear the sounds of battle, of clashing blades and arcane power. Part of him wanted to run back to the battlefield, to the place where he felt the most at home.

A figure lay on the floor, lithe form splayed out on the hardwood. It might have been dark, but Fabian still recognized him.

It was just like Adaine had seen — Riz, bloodied and bruised and battered, unconscious on the floor with a cut across his forehead, leaking blood onto the hardwood below. Bile rose in Fabian’s throat, but he swallowed it down. He didn’t do this. Adaine was wrong. He could have been trusted from the _beginning,_ if only she had seen things better —

Gently, he shook Riz’s shoulder. Please let him be just unconscious, please—

Riz’s eyes snapped open, their familiar yellow glow and feline pupils sending relief shooting down Fabian’s spine. “Oh thank god, you’re not dead—”

Recognition flared in Riz’s eyes, and he started muttering beneath his breath, eyes widening as he looked at Fabian. He pushed himself away, skittering backwards and towards the corner of the room, tracking blood across the floor, on his hands, staining his clothes. 

Fabian took a step closer, shock flooding him and turning him into a statue at the way Riz winced when he approached. “The Ball? It’s— it’s me, Fabian, your best fri—”

“You’re not my best friend,” Riz hissed out, eyes wild, blood dripping from his forehead. “Go away, get away from me, you  _ monster _ —” He let out a choked sob, voice breaking on the word ‘monster.’ Something in Fabian’s chest shattered. “You did this. You did this youdidthis _ youdidthis _ —”

Fabian fell to his knees, mind racing. Riz — he looked so  _ broken _ . Traumatized. He didn’t— what Riz was saying couldn't be true, he hadn’t seen him since before they entered the mirror. And yet — the fear in Riz’s eyes was everything but fake. 

What the hell did Baron do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so it's been nearly two months. i blame online school. 
> 
> not sure if this was clear enough in the writing itself, but by "becoming fabian" baron could essentially replace all memories from within the mirror realm that riz had containing baron in them with fabian, since that (baron being fabian) is a lie in and of itself that has now become true and replaced reality. hopefully that got communicated!
> 
> kudos and comments make my day!


	6. little scared of something new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which they leave the mirror dimension, and figure out what comes next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: semi-graphic description of injuries
> 
> title from 'devil town' by cavetown

Fabian didn’t know how long he knelt there. In a pool of Riz’s blood. Staring, vacantly, at Riz, at his panicked breaths and trembling fingers and the bruises around his neck, his wrists, his cheek. 

God, what a sight they must have been. Fabian, the knees of his pants slowly staining deep red as he stared off into god-knows-what. Riz, straddling the line between consciousness and sleep, blood still trickling from the cut on his head that Fabian wished so badly he could heal, looking towards Fabian every few seconds with a fear-filled glance that shot straight through his heart like a bullet. 

Questions raced through his mind, faster than he could even begin to answer. How long had Riz been here? What happened to Baron? Why was Riz so afraid of him? (What had his doppelganger done, for him to be hurt so badly?) 

Every nervous movement, every shaking breath felt like a cut, the shallow hurt building up quickly to be an all-consuming ache. This — it couldn’t really be Riz. He was loud, despite his height; he made sure that he would be seen no matter what room he was in; he was witty and a little awkward and focused and driven. The Riz in front of Fabian right now was anything but. 

Distantly, Fabian could hear the sounds of battle. He knew that he should be out there, should be helping fight the monster that just so happened to share his face, but every time the thought entered his mind he couldn’t figure out how to make his legs work again. 

Time passed. Fabian wasn’t sure how much. It seemed to stand still, with both he and Riz unmoving, but eventually the sounds of battle slowed. He could only hope that the rest of the Bad Kids had triumphed. Footsteps approached; a hand grasped his shoulder. Fabian couldn’t find it in him to turn his head. Across the room, the clerics were cautiously beginning to heal Riz’s wounds; at some point between when Fabian had walked in to now, Riz had fallen unconscious. 

“Fabian, we need to go home,” Gorgug said. Fabian turned his head — it took so much effort — and locked eyes with Gorgug, and he could see his own shock and horror reflected back at him. 

“He said— he thinks I did this,” was all Fabian could say, voice hoarse and rough. “Gorgug, I—” His voice broke, a half-laugh, half-sob escaping him. He didn’t want to cry, not here, not while everyone was reeling from battle and Riz was right in front of them, finally, after so long, but he couldn’t even begin to process what it meant, that Riz couldn’t look him in the eye anymore. 

“I—” Gorgug let out a sigh. “I know. Let’s go home, Fabian.”

Everything felt numb, like his limbs weren’t truly his. Fabian let Gorgug guide him towards the van, refused Kristen’s attempt to heal him, because the blood on his pants and his hands was anything but his. It made him sick, to remember that it was Riz’s blood, that Riz had been hurt so much when they hadn’t been there for him, and he couldn’t stop the rush of bile that flooded his mouth, leaning weakly against the van as he emptied the contents of his stomach to the ground below. He clambered into the very backseat of the van, Fig climbing in beside him — she couldn’t look him in the eyes, and honestly, he didn’t know if he could look himself in the eyes either — and they sat in silence as the rest of the party filed silently out of the house. 

(Fabian spent too long looking out the window, searching for — a corpse, a body, his body, but he found nothing. What had happened outside? How long had he spent, doubled over in shock, in that dim room?)

Gorgug carried Riz’s unconscious body out, cradling him so gently — he looked so small in Gorgug’s arms, so fragile. (Fabian had never thought he would ever describe Riz like that, but, well. There’s a first time for everything.) He laid him down in the middle row of seats, and Riz was so small that even lying down and splayed out, he only took up two seats, his head resting in Kristen’s lap. Physically, he looked better than when Fabian had first seen him — the cut on his head had been sealed, as well as some lacerations on the rest of his body that Fabian hadn’t noticed in the dim lighting. There were still bruises everywhere — it was honestly sickening to look at, and Fabian felt like there was more skin discoloured than not. Every now and then, he would twitch in his sleep, ears flicking back and forth, fingers clenching into tight little fists. 

Tracker, Adaine, and Gorgug filed into the remaining seats in the van, and with a roar of the engine that cut the tense silence, they began the drive home. 

+

Fig had never seen Fabian like this before.

Sure, he’d had some bad days in the past. But no memory of his frustration at a bad game or the days where he would fall into himself, when he would inevitably think a little too much about his father and his past and the burden of a legacy, could have prepared Fig for how vacant his eyes looked now. 

Something — something in Fabian had broken when he found Riz. And seeing as Riz was unconscious when the rest of them had finally defeated Baron and walked into the house, wondering why Fabian hadn’t returned, Fig had no idea what it could have been. 

He’d been kneeling in a pool of blood. Fig could only assume it was Riz’s. 

She glanced surreptitiously at the row of seats ahead of her — Riz was still out cold, good, and Gorgug was playing some music, essentially deafening them to whatever Fig wanted to say if she said it quietly. “Hey, Fabian?”

He turned to look at her from where he had previously been gazing out the window, and shiver went down Fig’s spine at how empty his eyes looked. “Yes?”

“You didn’t— Riz was injured before you found him, right?”

The flash of anger and hurt in his eyes was enough to tell Fig that he understood what she was really asking. “I didn’t hurt him, Fig,” Fabian said, voice hard and bitter and thin. “Adaine was wrong. He was already like that when I found him; I had nothing to do with it.” 

“I didn’t mean—”

“You did.”

Fig let out a breath. He was right. She did mean it that way. 

Fabian, sensing that she had nothing more to say, turned away to gaze out the window. Fig entertained herself by conjuring cigarettes, filling her nearly-empty box with more cloves, taking full advantage of how this realm worked before they returned to a world where she couldn’t just make her own illicit substances. (She didn’t light any, though — Gorgug would kill her if the scent got into the van, especially because this was still technically his parents’ until his birthday.) Kristen and Tracker talked quietly between themselves ahead of them; Gorgug and Adaine seemed focused on the road ahead. 

When Fig next looked over at Fabian, there were tears rolling down his cheeks. 

Somehow, he was crying completely silently; not a single sob left his chest, not a single gasp or shaky breath could be heard, despite how close Fig was to him. But Fig couldn’t say she just imagined the droplets that fell from his chin and spilled from his eyes. 

Fig couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen Fabian cry before. 

He glanced over at her, and she quickly switched her gaze to the back of Tracker’s head, but clearly not quickly enough, as he started wiping the tears from his face, still so silent. Questions bubbled up in her mind, and she couldn’t bring herself to voice them; not when everything was still so recent, so raw. 

Everything was the same as they had left it, at Strongtower Apartments; Riz’s apartment was still in disarray, and the mirror was still made from the same rippling, reflective substance that they had stepped through. Gorgug was the first to step through, Riz’s body in his arms, followed quickly by Kristen, Tracker, and Adaine. 

“Glad we can finally leave this place behind,” Fig muttered under her breath as Adaine passed through the portal, glancing at Fabian to see if he had any response. It was unsettling, to see nothing on his usually expressive face. He stepped through the mirror, and Fig followed close behind.

She checked her crystal — it was working again, thank god — and she had about twenty messages from her mom, five from Gilear (which was honestly a lot, considering he couldn’t figure out how to use his crystal 90% of the time), and one from Jawbone. It was — wait, it was the same day?

“Is anyone else’s crystal showing that it’s the same day as when we went in?” Fig asked, prompting anyone that wasn’t carrying someone (so, everyone but Gorgug) to pull out their crystals and confirm that yeah, it was apparently the same day. 

“Did time just— not pass?” Kristen asked. “Or, pass slower?”

“It’s around 3:30,” Adaine said, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen from Riz’s desk. “And if we left at ten, and we spent about a day and a half there — did time pass five times faster in the mirror realm?”

“Wait, but if time passes faster, and if we assume Riz got taken way before we got here...” Fig trailed off, regarding Riz’s unconscious body with dawning horror and shock. “How long was Riz in there?”

It didn’t take long for their parents to show up, to take in the gouges in the wooden floor and their dishevelled appearances and Riz, unconscious in Gorgug’s arms and respond the only way they knew how to, with scolding and heals and hugs. 

Fig didn’t miss the way that Sklonda’s eyes took on the same vacancy as Fabian’s, just for a moment, mere seconds, before her feline gaze flashed hot with concern and she ran to Riz’s side. “What happened to him?”

There was a moment where the Bad Kids all exchanged glances, a beat of silence that hung in the air just a second too long and a little too heavy. “We’re still trying to figure that out,” Adaine said, breaking the tension. 

Sandralynn fussed over Fig, as she was wont to do, and once she had ensured that Fig wasn’t hurt she launched into another one of her signature lectures, the ones that Fig would respond to with a rolling of her eyes and a lighting of her cigarettes. She couldn’t find it in her to rebel this time. Jawbone came up beside Sandralynn, a grim look on his face. “Riz— he got banged up real bad in there, huh?”

“Kristen and Tracker managed to heal most of his physical wounds,” Fig replied. She looked over at Riz, still passed out, on the dingy, scratched up couch that he slept on too often considering he had a bedroom just next door. Some of the bruises had faded from his skin, but there were still mottled patches that made her wince in sympathy, and the large cut on his head had been sealed together, stopping the bleeding. Fig could already tell that it would leave a scar, even with the healing magics of two clerics working on him. “There’s something Fabian won’t tell us, though. I don’t think the physical injuries are the worst of what Riz got.”

Jawbone looked at Sandralynn — god, Fig hated it whenever they did this thing, communicating without speaking somehow, it wasn’t even the Message cantrip, it was just stupid parental intuition — and she nodded in response, watching from a distance as Jawbone approached Sklonda. 

He crouched down beside her, saying something too softly for Fig to hear, and Sklonda nodded, tears escaping from her eyes. Riz always said he took after his father, but his eyes, glowing and feline, were nothing if not his mom’s. Jawbone pulled her into an embrace, and she sobbed into his shoulder — Fig turned away, both out of respect and the sense of discomfort that always comes with seeing someone be vulnerable — before collecting herself again, taking Riz’s hand in her own. Jawbone made his way back to Sandralynn and Fig, calling Kristen, Tracker, and Adaine over on his way. 

“So, I talked it over with Sklonda,” he said, “and we agreed that it might be a good idea for Riz to stay at Mordred Manor for the next while. She’s been having some trouble at work recently, too, so they’ll both be moving in. Don’t know for exactly how long, yet, but even just from the look of things now they’re both going through a lot.” He gave them a grin, but there was something deeply worried in his eyes. “It might be helpful to have three onsite clerics, huh?”

Adaine mumbled out an agreement, eyes unfocused as she made her way into a remote corner of the room. Jawbone pulled Tracker aside, talking to her in hushed and quiet tones. 

Fig looked over the room. It was a mess. On top of the general chaos that came with this being Riz’s office, there were people everywhere — in one corner, the Thistlesprings were talking with Gorgug, who was curled into a position that couldn’t have been comfortable to get close to eye level with them. It would almost be comical, if it weren’t for the deep and obvious concern on his parents’ faces. Riz was on the couch on the farthest side from the mirror, and Sklonda was still hovering over him, hand rubbing gently against Riz’s as silent tears escaped her. Jawbone and Tracker were talking in one corner, Sandralynn and Kristen nearby, and Adaine had found her own corner as well as a cup of coffee. Probably for the comfort more than the caffeine. 

And Fabian — Fig watched as Fabian slipped silently out the door, pulling on his bloodstained letterman jacket with that haunted, vacant look still stuck in his eyes. 

+

To say the least, Fabian was frustrated. 

He wasn’t surprised that his Mama didn’t show up at Strongtower when everyone called their parents. “I want to foster your independence,” his Mama would likely say, and her tactics of teaching him life lessons only served to frustrate him further. 

The Hangman responded eagerly to his mental command to Ride, just ride, Hangman, go do some laps on the highway or something while I figure things out, and the wind was nice in his hair as the Hangman did exactly that. 

He felt a little bad for not telling anyone about what Riz had told him, before everyone else had walked in. (Well, he’d told Gorgug, but he hadn’t explained much, and the memory of what exactly it was he’d said was hazy.) But it had already been bad enough that they’d refused to let him fight, twice, and were convinced on some level that he would hurt Riz. Him? Hurt Riz? Truly, Fabian could think of nothing farther than the truth. All he wanted was for the Ball to be okay and to be safe and to be unhurt, and the rest of them couldn’t even let him help to ensure that. 

Fabian remembered that he had Riz’s blood on his knees, and shuddered at the feeling of being dirty that went through him. He wasn’t a stranger to blood, but there was something unsettling about it being Riz’s that made him want to take a long, hot shower. “Take me home, Hangman,” he told his loyal bike, and the Hangman complied easily, performing a (probably illegal) U-turn to set them in the right direction. Fabian avoided looking at his reflection in the rearview mirrors, or the drying blood on his sweats. 

He wasn’t in the mood to deal with his Mama, or Cathilda’s incessant fussing (and don’t get him wrong, Fabian loved how much Cathilda cared, and her obvious sweet spot for him, but if one more person asked if he was okay today he thought he might just snap), or Gilear’s…. or Gilear. The Hangman drove himself into the garage, and Fabian swung up into the tree that stood opposite his bedroom window, gracefully landing on the floor of his room before immediately heading into his bathroom to shed the feeling of dirt, the stickiness of blood, from his skin. 

The shower did wonders to clear his head. He checked his crystal when he left the bathroom, hair dripping — no new messages, go figure — and flopped back onto his bed, mind racing. 

Riz had been convinced that Fabian was the person that hurt him. But Fabian hadn’t laid eyes on him until that moment, so what had actually happened to Riz? 

The only other person in the mirror dimension had been Baron, probably. But Baron was a creepy little doll-like creature that send a shiver of horror down Fabian’s spine, nowhere near his own dashing visage and figure. So then, how…

A few stray pieces clicked in Fabian’s head, moments that seemed disconnected until just now. He bolted upright, scrambling for his crystal before sending a text to the Bad Kids’ groupchat. I think I know some of what happened to Riz.

A flood of dings and beeps filled his room as they responded, messages ranging from Gorgug’s my parents wanted me to be home for dinner to Fig’s where are we meeting, i’m grabbing the other girls as we speak to Adaine’s disbelieving are you sure? 

Fabian responded, telling them to meet in Seacaster manor as soon as they could. If he was right— if he’d figured it out—

Well, things wouldn’t be great for him, but at least he’d be able to sleep at night, knowing that he earned back even a little bit of their trust. Even if the only reason Fabian had lost any of it in the first place was a misinterpreted vision from Adaine. 

It would help him a little, and it would help Riz a lot, and that was what mattered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am ashamed to say that i think this is the least angst-filled chapter in the entire fic thus far
> 
> kudos and comments make my day! find me on tumblr and twitter as [rowansberry](https://rowansberry.tumblr.com/) and [rowansberrie](https://twitter.com/rowansberrie)


	7. back to the streets where we began

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which riz gukgak finally, finally, comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'nine in the afternoon' by panic! at the disco
> 
> cw: semi-graphic descriptions of injuries

Riz woke up in an unfamiliar room, with a pounding head and a deep ache in his bones. 

It wasn’t the same room that he shared with— with Fabian— (and for reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, a sharp pain shot through his head at the thought, the memory of Fabian) it wasn’t that room, it was different, but it was still unfamiliar, and it set him on edge. His memory was hazy, clouded over, shimmering and twisting and fading in and out like mist above a lake, and the last thing he remembered—

_ A pool of his own blood. Fabian, and then Fabian again, and fading in and out of consciousness with nothing but fear in his heart. Arms carrying him— a warm light— and after that, nothing.  _

He tore off the blankets covering him, clambering slowly out of the bed — his every muscle ached in protest — and he caught sight of himself, his reflection in a full-length mirror. 

The last time he’d been anywhere near a mirror, he ended up getting dragged into it, but as Riz walked forward and pressed a cautious hand against the smooth, cool surface, it was solid beneath his palm. A normal mirror. Not a portal.

He took a moment to study himself — it felt like days since he’d seen his own face, seen a mirror at all — and he looked. Well. Riz looked bad, to say the least. 

Gingerly, he pushed his hair aside — it really was getting too long, if it wasn’t tucked beneath his cap it got in his eyes and brushed against the top of his nose and he could feel some curls against the nape of his neck — and the wound on his head, it was healing. Closed, like someone had sewn it shut but without any thread, and he could already tell that it would scar. There were bruises everywhere — all at various stages of fading, some nothing more than a pale yellow, others thick and bright and blooming in petals of blue and violet and black. The biggest, worst ones — one, around his neck, wrapping around it like a necklace,  _ the sensation of fingers against his neck, of a strong grip crushing his windpipe, he can’t breathe, he can’t — _ two, around his wrists and ankles, the skin rubbed raw and framed with a kaleidoscope of dark colour,  _ ropes cinched tight, too tight, rubbing and rubbing and he can’t get away, he’s stuck here _ — three, when he lifted his shirt to inspect the deep ache in his side, a mural of the colours of the night sky colouring the right side of his torso,  _ kicked, again, again, again— _

Riz took a shaky breath, dragging his hands down his face. No wonder every step, every breath, sent pain ricocheting through his body like a pinball. 

The door opened, Riz tensing his body at the sound, there was nowhere to hide that wouldn’t get him found immediately— 

“Riz?”

He relaxed at the familiar voice, and couldn’t help the rush of emotion that caused his voice to break and tears to spring into his eyes as he responded. “Adaine?” He sounded hoarse, he sounded broken, and he couldn’t care less, not when this was someone he knew. Someone that was safe and  _ familiar _ . She looked the same — curly blond hair, round glasses that sat perched atop her nose, intricate swirls of henna curling up her arms, warm brown eyes touched with concern and worry. “Am I— where—”

She pulled him into a hug, and Riz tensed at the touch, but this was Adaine, this was someone he knew, this was fine, it was finally fine, and he felt himself relax into it as he returned the embrace. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” Adaine said, voice soft and low. “You were so hurt, and you were asleep for so long—” Her voice broke, and Riz could hear the tears in it, and he could feel himself blink back tears, too. “I’m just— I’m so happy you’re okay.”

“You guys got out of the mirrors?” he asked, voice rough and low. It didn’t sound like him, but — he didn’t feel much like himself, right now, with bruises littering his skin and a barely-healed cut on his head and a voice that scraped like sandpaper and tears in his eyes. 

They pulled apart, and Adaine nodded. “It’s a long story, and I promise I’ll explain everything later, but — Jawbone told me to bring you downstairs, when you woke up. He wants to talk to you.”

“About what?”

She shrugged, walking out the door of the room and waiting for Riz to follow. “I wish I could say I knew.”

Mordred Manor was a lot cozier than the name suggested — this was Riz’s first time visiting, and he’d expected something a lot more grand and a lot less cluttered from what Fig had been saying about the house before they moved, but it was very much not that. Despite its size, it felt  _ full _ , like every corner was lived in and taken care of. Hallways stretched into hallways stretched into rickety staircases, and Riz couldn’t help but notice the telltale marks of secret passages as Adaine led him through the twisting corridors — and strangely enough, that was comforting in itself, that he could still recognize something as simple as a secret passage. That he still had this part of him — that he wasn’t completely changed from the Riz that entered the mirror dimension days ago. 

Adaine slowed when they reached what looked to be the kitchen, gesturing for Riz to take a seat at the table as she grabbed a glass and filled it with water, setting it down in front of Riz. He downed it eagerly — he hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until just now, and when he spoke again his voice was a little smoother, flowed a little easier. “Where’s everyone else?”

Something flashed over Adaine’s face, too quick for Riz to catch what it was. “Sandralynn’s getting dinner in town with Fig, and Tracker and Kristen went on a date — it’s just us and Jawbone in the house.”

As if the mention of his name summoned him, Jawbone lumbered into the kitchen, an easy smile on his disarmingly friendly face. (If Riz was being honest, it took him an almost embarrassingly long time to warm up to Jawbone — there was no reason for any one person to be this friendly, this open and earnest and  _ good _ without expecting something in return, or running some con, playing the long game, but. Jawbone was exactly that, and had proved himself almost more times than Riz could count. It still unsettled him, like his bones weren’t sitting right.) “Hey, kiddo,” Jawbone said, his voice the same rough, half-growl that it was the last time Riz heard it. “How’re you feeling?”

“Sore,” Riz answered honestly. “Tired. How long was I out?”

“Around a day.” Jawbone walked to the kitchen counter, filling a kettle with water before setting it above a flame, grabbing two mugs from a shelf and dropping two tea bags in, getting a lemon from the fridge and cutting it into slices. Riz watched, because he didn’t know what else to do — Adaine had left at some point between Jawbone’s entrance and now, and the room was silent but for the ticking of the clock on the wall behind him and the sounds of the knife in Jawbone’s hand cutting through thick rind and soft fruit flesh. “I’ll let your mom explain why you’re here and not at Strongtower,” Jawbone said, putting the lemon down and moving to another corner of the kitchen, pulling out jars and shifting containers around until he found what he was looking for, a large glass jar full of thick, amber honey in his arms. “But for now — I figured we could talk, and after I can give you something for those bruises.” 

Riz swallowed, and there was a lump in his throat. He wasn’t sure when it got there. “Alright.”

Jawbone looked over at Riz, and once again Riz was disarmed by how honest and open his gaze was. His eyes weren’t anything special — brown, a warm, woodsy brown that reminded Riz of the thick oak trees that cast shadows across the park he used to go to as a kid, that he’d clamber up and sit in and wish he could feel this tall forever — but they somehow communicated that same earnestness and honesty that seems just too good to be true. His voice was gruff, but soft, when he spoke next. “Do you remember anything, from when you were in the mirror?”

The kettle began to whistle on the stove. 

_ A hand against his throat, he can’t breathe — “do you trust me,” in two snaking voices that entwine, one tenor and one higher and softer — a grin stretched white and wide — sunlight glinting off the edges of a broken bottle —  _

Riz looked Jawbone in those earnest, honest eyes. “No.”

There was a moment where Riz was unsure if Jawbone believed him — the kettle kept whistling, and Jawbone’s eyes stayed locked on Riz’s, and he felt as though Jawbone could see right through him and all his lies. The room is filled with nothing but the high-pitched whine of the kettle as the water in it reaches a boil. What would he tell him? Tell any of them? Everything was hazy and out of order in his head and nothing he remembered made sense or did him any good to think about, and Riz could feel his heart begin to race the longer this stretched on.

Jawbone turned to the stove, the incessant whistling of the kettle fading to silence as the flame dissipated and the water began to cool. He poured water into the two mugs, and Riz could see steam rising from the mouth of each, setting the kettle back down on the stovetop before working carefully to add honey and lemon into the tea. “Here,” he said, carrying the two mugs to the table and gently sliding one towards Riz, taking a sip out of the other. “I wasn’t sure how sweet you like your tea, so I only added one spoonful of honey.”

Tentatively, Riz took a sip — it was hot, and a lot milder than his usual beverage of choice (coffee, black), and if he really concentrated he could taste the soft notes of honey and tang of the lemon between the flavour from the tea. (Normally, he didn’t have enough time to prepare something like tea— normally, he made a jumbo pot of coffee on the old coffee maker that he owned for years and kept refilling his mug whenever it got close to empty, until all that was left was an unshakeable buzz in his bones and an inedible sludge at the bottom of his mug.) It… wasn’t bad. “Thanks.”

Silence hung in the air as they both sipped at their drinks, and while it wasn’t filled with the same tension from earlier, it wasn’t comfortable, either. (Riz had barely interacted with Jawbone during the school year — coupling his tendency to distrust people with his refusal to acknowledge any of what his mom and friends think are “concerning” habits meant it would have taken a  _ lot _ before he’d do something like go pay a visit to the school guidance counselor. It was awkward in the way that most things are when you’re stuck with someone you know of but haven’t talked to a lot.) 

“Tell me a little about yourself,” Jawbone said, effectively breaking the silence that had grown between them. He said it in a way that was different from what Riz was used to, when it came to that phrase — he was used to it coming from teachers that really couldn’t care less about what hobbies or interests their students had, or from parents of ‘friends’ that were really only asking it as a polite formality. When Jawbone said it, it was genuine. (Riz just couldn’t get used to how Jawbone was a genuine person; it still felt so alien to him.) He could tell that Jawbone actually wanted to hear about Riz, and how Riz saw himself. 

“Well,” Riz started, hands curled around the warm ceramic of the mug in front of him, “there’s not much to say you probably don’t already know. I’m a goblin; I want to be a private investigator; and I like solving mysteries.” All true. 

For some reason, he couldn’t look Jawbone in the face. He stared down into his tea instead. “That’s all.”

“Mysteries, huh?” Jawbone’s fingers tapped gently against the table, an unfamiliar but distinct rhythm that Riz couldn’t help but analyze, looking for a pattern. “That’s right, your friend Penny was one of the girls that got trapped in the palimpsests last year. Sklonda told me about how you looked for her.”

Riz nodded. It still stung, sometimes, to think about what happened in freshman year — maybe if he’d been a little more aware, or a little faster, or a little less  _ distracted _ with having  _ friends _ for once in his life, maybe he’d have found Penny before it had come to getting Sandralynn to go save her. But he’d done alright. They’d figured it out in the end, and they’d killed Kalvaxus, and things had been fine. “Mom asks me to help with her cases, sometimes. If she needs a second set of eyes.”

Silence, again. Fingers tapping on a wooden table. “Your mom’s real lucky,” Jawbone said, and Riz looked up, looked into those honest eyes again, “to have a good kid like you.”

A lump rose in Riz’s throat, and he took another sip of his tea, unable to reply.

Distantly, he heard a door unlock and open, shoes be shuffled off, socked feet padding their way through wooden floors and twisting hallways. Over Jawbone’s shoulder, Riz watched another sorely missed face appear in the doorway, and couldn’t help the choked sob that escaped him. 

“ _ Mom _ —”

“Oh,  _ Riz— _ ”

His chair screeched loud and ugly against the wooden floors as he pushed it back, running before he was even fully aware of what he was doing and crashing into his mom, the feeling of belonging and home flooding his body. She gripped him so tightly, the hug of a mother who had seen their child stare death in the face, and Riz squeezed her right back, the embrace of a lost man seeing home again. 

The Gukgaks didn’t love loudly. Riz had always known this, on one level or another — their version of love was Riz making dinner the best he could on the nights his mom stayed late at work, or Sklonda silently leaving a plate of fruit and crackers for Riz when he was up late working on a case or cramming for an exam. Their version of love wasn’t wrought with “I love you”s and embraces and words, loud, open affection, but it worked all the same. Riz learned it from his parents, and his parents taught it to him, and it worked. It was their version of love.

Riz knew that he and his mom, they didn’t love loud — and he knew that for them to embrace like this, like they were clinging desperately to a shipwreck, for his mom to sob into his shoulder and for him to cry into her chest — he knew that this was something different, deeper, than he’d ever had to deal with before. 

He doesn’t know how long they stood there, crying, sobbing into each other and holding each other like they were all they had left (and really, that wasn’t too far from the truth). At some point, they pulled away, and his mom’s face — she was still pretty, as pretty as the wedding photo on her desk at the station, even as her face wrinkled and creased with age, she was always so  _ poised _ — was streaked with tears, relief and an inexplicable sadness colouring her eyes. (She always said those were the one thing Riz got from her, her eyes — and she wasn’t wrong about that either, with both of them having one yellow eye, standard for goblins, and one blue, with pupils that Fig always compared to a cat’s.)

Her hands rested on Riz’s shoulders, a comforting weight, and she moved one to cup his face, gently wiping away a stray tear with her thumb. “Oh, Riz— I was so  _ worried _ —”

“I’m okay,” he said, and it was only half a lie, “I’m here, I’m okay, I’m  _ okay _ —”

A sob escaped Sklonda’s mouth, and she pulled him back in for another brief hug. “Gods above, Riz, don’t you dare do this again,” she said, voice muffled as she embraced him. 

“I didn’t  _ do _ anything, I got dragged in there—”

Instantly, his mom flipped into detective-mode (Riz was all too familiar with detective-mode, it kicked in whenever he came home singed/covered in corn/wet/etc., and it was  _ scarily _ good at getting him to explain.) “Dragged in?” she asked, and her voice was all business with only a hint of concern. “By what?”

“I—”

_ A white hand, with black ball joints along every section of the fingers— a hand much larger than his, rough with callouses and scars— _

He winced, a sharp pain shooting through his head. Nothing made sense, none of his memories were coherent, there were two versions of everything and he couldn’t tell which one was real.

“I’m not sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the words of jay, who i texted an insane amount throughout the writing of this chapter, 'help him'. (this chapter is where we finally get to the comfort part of hurt/comfort)
> 
> this fic is getting pretty close to an end!! one or two chapters more, to be honest - it's exciting to think that this'll be my first finished multi-chapter fic ever. dimension 20 u got my creative juices flowing and i thank you for that. 
> 
> kudos and comments make my day! find me on [tumblr](https://rowansberry.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/rowansberrie)


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